Design and Development of Single Flight Horizontal Screw Conveyor Metering Mechanism for Disposing Vermicompost Manure into Subsurface of Soil

Research was conducted to design a single-flight horizontal screw conveyor metering mechanism for disposed of vermicompost manure into the subsurface of soil. All the components of the screw conveyor were constructed from locally available materials for the mixing of vermicompost manure properly and delivered into the delivery pipe of size 70 mm through which it dropped into the furrow made by the furrow opener of tractor drawn subsurface manure applicator already design in Farm Machinery and Power Engineering Department of G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology Pantnagar Uttarakhand. The design was made by computing the hopper volume, shaft diameter, screw geometry, and the discharge capacity of the conveyor respectively. Vermicompost spreading from one location to another in the field is difficult task due to non-uniformly distribution of it into the field during the broadcasting method. Hence a horizontal screw conveyor mechanism was designed which could mixed the vermicompost properly and then disposed it in correct ratio So a screw flight of pitch 90 mm and a thickness of screw of 3 mm was welded over the solid shaft. The length of the shaft was 1800 mm with a pitch angle of 29°. Three different screw flight outer diameters viz. 96, 106 and 116 mm were selected and tested in the workshop for performance evaluation screw mechanism at four different moisture contents namely.13,21, 31 and 43% respectively. For this purpose, a three-phase variable speed electric motor was connected to the applicator by a telescopic universal joint shaft of length 916.6 mm inclined at 8° from the horizontal. The screw conveyor mechanism was rotated at different rotational speeds namely 14,21,28,35 and 42 rpm. Therefore, the result pertained that for handling of vermicompost manure at a discharge rate of 10 t ha⁻¹ (recommended dose), the screw conveyor flight of outer diameter 116 mm, vermicompost moisture of 43 % (d.b) and the tractor forward speed was normally maintained between 2.0 to 3.0 km h⁻¹ were recommended respectively.