EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE OF A HAMMER MILL THROUGH USING DIFFERENT TYPES OF LOCALLY MANUFACTURED HAMMERS

Article The study has investigated the effects of three factors, which were feeding rate, the rotational speed, and the type of used hammers on the some important indicators that could reflecting the performance of the hammer mill. These indicators were: grinding fineness (%), productivity (Kg hr -1 ), and consumed energy (KW). The experiment parameters were organized using a Randomized Complete Design (CRD) with three replications. The results showed that by increasing the feeding rate from 2 cm up to 4 cm, the fineness of grinding, productivity and energy consumed for both crops increased. The results also indicated that by increasing the rotational speed, the productivity and energy consumption increased, while the speed of 2154 rpm achieved the fineness grinding of barley and corn. The results also indicated that the use of conventional hammer led to the highest value concerning the fineness of grinding, and to the highest energy consumptions for both crops, barley, and corn. As for productivity, the manufactured hammer led to the highest values for both crops. However, considering the triple interaction between the studied factors (grinding fineness, productivity, and consumed energy), the manufactured hammer led to the highest