JURAN's Separator System – Boosting agricultural efficiency

One of Juran’s flagship products is its best-selling separator system with drum mechanism that separates agricultural produce from spurious material at previously unattainable levels of efficiency. The system handles potatoes, onions, flower bulbs, tomatoes, and citrus for the canning industry, achieving 95% efficiency separating them from stones, clods and other spurious material.

Juran has enjoyed a great deal of success marketing its separator system and the underlying technology through the Grimme Concern (Germany), Climax (Holland) and Harriston Industries Inc. (ND, USA). Both the drum mechanism and separator system are patented in Europe, America and Australia.

The Challenge:

Every potato and bulb grower today is aware of the weaknesses of current practices. A major problem in potato and bulb collecting is the separation of good produce from clods, stones and damaged produce.

Despite all attempts to solve this problem through a variety of separation systems offering additional elevators or more inclined conveyers, the mixture coming out of the combine still includes 30%-40% spurious material.

Such poor separation results have significant consequences:

Transport

	Requires a larger number of vehicles in the field
	The quantities loaded into each cart or sac are not true produce quantities
	Transport of spurious material leads to financial losses in increased truck miles

Damage to the soil

	More soil compaction due to larger number of carts and trucks
	Soil depletion through removal of clods, stones and organic matter

Workforce

Increased man/hours are required for continued processing to separate unwanted material in the packing houses

Refrigeration

	Poor separation results mean extra and wasteful refrigeration space
	Damage to produce occurs from rotten produce not separated out

The Solution

The Institute for Agricultural Engineering, together with Juran Metal Works, has sought and found a practical and economic solution to this challenge. Research conducted at the Institute's laboratories revealed significantly different resilience coefficients between potatoes and clods, stones or damaged potatoes. This makes it possible to separate them through a process of bouncing.

The separation process: The mix of materials from the field – produce + soil, stones, clods and so on – is placed on a vibrating rod conveyor, which sifts out the soil. Next, the mixture drops into the separation drum which rotates thereby separating out the clods, stones and damaged potatoes. The produce and other materials are directed onto two attached conveyors, separated by a partition. The rest of the organic material is discharged back to the field. Through this system we achieve 98% separation.

Points table – Separators

Conclusions:

It is clear that the separation system based on a resilience coefficient principle emerges as the most efficient, economical and durable of all existing separation systems. It represents significant savings in separation equipment, saves hours of extra labor in the packing houses, as well as savings in transport and refrigeration. Among the separation systems currently available, it represents the ideal solution.