Commercialisation of lightweight elevator and advanced secondary cleaning system for sugarcane harvesters : Final report BSS251

Abstract

The Australian sugar industry is facing the challenge of increasing extraneous matter (EM), depression of ccs, sugar quality issues, and increasing harvesting and transport costs per tonne of final product. In addition, Likewise, cane loss remains a major background issue. Leslie and Wilson (1996) identified EM as a major contributor to the depression of ccs in the northern canegrowing regions. If low EM is seen as paramount by the industry, either cleaning the cane at the mill in dedicated cleaning plants, or improved performance of cleaning systems on harvesters, is required.Improving the performance of harvester cleaning systems is not easy because a number of fundamental problems exist. Rational review of the function of trash removal from a stream of billets and trash, particularly under wet trash conditions, indicates that effective cleaning is extremely difficult to achieve in one pass through any cleaning system. This is due because tof the interactions between the leaf material and billets of cane.The goal of this project was to development of a pre-production prototype lightweight harvester elevator and integrated secondary cleaning system. The project was commercially driven and built on the knowledge gained from the SRDC-funded project BSS210 in which h. The application of high-speed conveyor technology and advanced pneumatic cleaning concepts were integrated into a cane harvester. The design criteria targeted enhanced machine performance through reduced cane loss and EM, whilst reducing machine weight and improving machine stability.

Improving the performance of harvester cleaning systems is not easy because a number of fundamental problems exist. Rational review of the function of trash removal from a stream of billets and trash, particularly under wet trash conditions, indicates that effective cleaning is extremely difficult to achieve in one pass through any cleaning system. This is due to the interactions between the leaf material and billets of cane.

The concept of high-speed hugger belts and a blower cleaning arrangement tested in BSS210 was found to dramatically outperform current secondary extractor systems. The pre-production prototype was designed as both a retrofit item and for fitting to new machines. This facilitates a more rapid adoption over systems that are available only on new machines.