The residual agricultural plastic film in China is not easily recovered due to the thinness and poor mechanical properties of domestic films, and a large amount of plastic film remaining in farmland soil poses a great threat to soil quality and crop production. A spring-tooth residual plastic film collector (SRPFC) is widely used in domestic residual plastic film (RPF) recycling operations. However, there are two major problems in the current SRPFC: the low recovery rate of the residual film (RRRF) caused by the difficulty of film-stripping and the high impurity rate in the film (IRF). In this paper, a stripping and impurity removal device (SIRD) is designed to address the existing problems of SRPFC, which is mainly composed of film-stripping tooth plates (FTP), two wind-collecting hoods, and two centrifugal fans. The motion and force analysis of the RPF in the film-stripping process was carried out, and the arc FTP was determined to be used for film-stripping. The size parameters of the FTP were obtained by establishing the coordinate system to solve the differential equation. By comparing and analyzing the force of RPF in the airflow field of the test bench for suspension speed and the airflow field of the wind-collecting hood, the RPF equivalent particle was established. The discrete phase model (DPM) in Fluent software was used to simulate the movement of the RPF equivalent particle, and the calculated air volume range of the centrifugal fan was 5501.88~6829.92 m³/h. The effects of forward speed, rotating speed of film conveying chain harrow (FCCH), and rotating speed of the centrifugal fan on RRRF and IRF were studied by orthogonal rotary combination experiment. The test results showed that the best combination of machine operation parameters was when the forward speed was 5 km/h, the rotating speed of the FCCH was 235 r/min, and the rotating speed of the centrifugal fan was 1978 r/min. Under these conditions, the RRRF was 92.53%, and the IRF was 9.31%. Field experiments were carried out with the rounded parameters, and the average RRRF was 92.07%, and the average IRF was 9.56% under the parameter combination, indicating that the optimization scheme of the device was feasible.

A tumbler screen-type residual film–impurity mixture wind separator is the key equipment for the secondary utilization of farmland residual film. During its operation, the proportion of impurities in the separated waste mulch film intermittently increases, resulting in poor working stability of the device, which may hamper long-term operation. To address the above issues, the material inside the separation unit was continuously monitored, and the main factor affecting separator performance was determined to be the challenges in the effective depolymerization of some residual film-impurity mixtures. The principles of agglomeration and depolymerization of the residual film-impurity mixtures were analyzed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method (DEM) flow-solid coupling simulation methods. The key factor affecting the disaggregation of the mixture was the collision force between the residual film–impurity mixture and the trommel screen. The collision force was maximum when the residual film–impurity mixture first collided with the trommel screen when it was fed into the separation device. Furthermore, simulations were carried out for different inlet structure forms; the evaluation index was the maximum collision force of the residual film–impurity mixture agglomerate on the trommel screen. The best disaggregation effect was obtained with a square feed inlet and at a feeding rate of 202 kg/h. A prototype was built using these specifications for verification. The average value of the ratio of impurities in the residual film was 6.966%, the coefficient of variation was 7.38%, and the dispersion of statistical results was small. The ratio of impurities in the residual film was kept constant during the continuous operation of the wind separator. Thus, in this study, we analyzed the agglomerate disaggregation process and provided theoretical insights for determining the optimal structures of the inlets of various cleaning devices and the feeding volumes.

The air-suction roller dibbler for peanuts is the core component to realizing precision seeding on film; however, the seeds in the dibbler cannot accurately fall into the seed-guiding mechanism during the work. In this study, we stabilized the seed trajectory by adjusting the installation angles of the chock block (IACB) and installation angles of the dibbler cover (IADC). We studied the seed-movement characteristics under different IACB and dibbler covers using EDEM simulation software. The separation between the seed and the baffle was obtained for different installation conditions, which were contact separation and noncontact separation. We obtained the best seeding performance when the seed was released from the edge of the dibbler cover in contact with the baffle of the seed separation tray. In the bench test, we obtained the best seed-feeding performance at 48.28° for the IACB, 12.29° for the IADC, and 3.84 km/h for the machine. The seeding pass rate was 95.35%, the missed seeding rate was 2.52%, and the reseeding rate was 2.11%. The field verification test showed that the machine worked well with the combination, and the seeding pass rate was above 92%, which meets the requirements of the single-grain precision sowing of peanuts and substantially improves the operation performance.

The airflow velocity in some nozzles is low, and the clearing of the nozzle is ineffective because of unreasonable airflow pipe arrangements and the distance from the nozzle to the screen surface of screen-hole-clearing devices for trommel-sieve-type residual film–impurity wind separators. In the present study, the main structure and working parameters affecting the screen hole clogging situation were determined through theoretical analysis and computational fluid dynamics simulations. In addition, a three-factor, three-level quadratic regression orthogonal center of rotation combination test was performed. The distance from the nozzle to the screen surface, fan wind speed, and the number of airflow pipes were selected as test factors, and the ratio of impurities in the residual film and the blockage ratio of the screen holes were selected as the evaluation indexes. The results indicated that the ratio of impurities in the residual film was reduced by 2.42% and the blockage ratio of the screen holes was reduced by 1.92% at a nozzle-to-screen distance of 102 mm, a fan wind speed of 24 m/s, and with four air pipes. The resulting impurity ratio in the film was 5.86%, and the blockage ratio of screen pores was 5.41%. The minimum airflow velocity of 15.8 m/s at each nozzle position of the optimized screen-hole-clearing device satisfied the requirements of screen hole clearing and blockage. Furthermore, the ratio of impurities in the residual film and the blockage ratio of the screen holes remained unchanged during the continuous operation of the device. This indicated that the optimized screen-hole-clearing device had a stable working performance. This study may provide a theoretical framework for the future development of screen-hole--clearing devices.

Calibrating and testing the discrete element parameters for peanut seedling film

Analysis of the influencing factors on the tribological properties of peanut straw