To design a sunflower machine for removing seeds from sunflower head (SH) based on air-jet impingement,\npreliminarily model of such machine was designed, constructed and evaluated. Effects of the seed location, angle of\nimpingement, distance between nozzle outlet and sunflower head, and rotational velocity of sunflower head on percentage of\nextracted seeds were examined. In order to examine the effects of air-jet parameters on percentage of removed seeds in\ndifferent locations of seed on sunflower head, sunflower heads were divided into three regions, namely central region, middle\nregion and side region. Results indicated that in all three regions, with increasing rotational velocity from 10 to 30 rev/min,\npercentages of removed seeds from the SH decreased. Results also indicated that in all three regions, with increasing distance\nbetween nozzle outlet and SH surface from 10 to 20 mm and decreasing distance between nozzle outlet and SH surface from 40\nto 20 mm, percentage of removed seeds from the SH by air-jet increased. Results indicated that in side region, with\ndecreasing angle of impingement from 90% to 30%, of removed seeds from the SH by air-jet increased and in middle and\ncentral regions, with increasing angle of impingement from 30�º to 60�º and decreasing angle of impingement from 90�º to 60�º,\npercentages of removed seeds from the SH by air-jet increased. Also in all tests, no seed damaged due to air-jet impinging\nwas observed.
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