Effect of operating parameters on performance of finger millet pearling machine

The effect of operational parameters such as feed rate (FR), drum speed (DS), and concave clearance (CC) was studied on the performance of a pearling drum. The pearling drum consists of pearling cylinder, pearling sieve, concave, and outer casing of the drum. The response surface method with CCRD experimental design was used to study the effect of operational parameters on pearling drum. The considered levels for optimizing operational parameters viz., FR, DS, and CC were 40–80 kg/h, 5–10 m/s, and 3–15 mm, respectively. The maximum pearling efficiency (PE) and minimum grain damage (GD) were found to be 98.40%, and 0.12%, respectively at FR, DS, and CC of 71.89 kg/h, 7.13 m/s, and 5.13 mm, respectively. The validation of the performance of pearling drum was carried out at optimized levels of parameters, the PE was found to be 99% with no GD against predicted PE of 98.40% and GD of 0.12%.