Determination of Attrition Rate of Locally Manufactured Plates for Corn Milling
Keywords:
Attrition rate; re-hone; pair of plates, bags of corn; slenderAbstract
Corn milling is a method of processing corn by crushing it between two contacting circular metallic plates. During instances where the blades had worn out, greater energy is required, hence the need to determine the wear rate of the corn mill blades. By knowing the wear rate of the corn mill blades, millers will have the exact knowledge of the quantity of products that can be milled to avoid usage of worn out blades. In this research 4 pairs of blades were used at separate times to determine their attrition rate. On each pair of the blades, twelve different evenly separated ridges were marked and their average height is taken before and after use to find the changes in height they undergo whenever they are used. Likewise, the mass to estimate the change in mass. The pairs of blades were re-horned (re-sharpened) for the next usage. This experiment is repeated three times for each pair of blades. At the end of the experiment, a range of 0.01 to 0.05mm/bag attrition rate for changes in ridges height was observed for quantities of maize ranging from 9.5 bags to 21.5 bags. It was observed that the slender the ridge the higher the specific attrition (mm/bag). It can be concluded that the amount of material (particles) lost from the plates through attrition is between 0.02 to 0.05 kg of metal for 9.5 bags to 21.5 bags of corn. This variation is dependent on the nature of the ridges on the plates. An average of 37.97 MJ of energy was generated as heat energy which is deposited into the milled product. In this way, the by-product acts as a coolant and had an average rise in temperature of 19.13 to 21.68 oC. Finally, to ensure efficient use of the plates and food safety, a pair of locally manufactured plates should be changed after milling about 14 bags of wet corn for an attrition rate of about 0.028 mm/bag.
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