The present research work was carried out in RiceMechanizationCenter at Meet El Deeba, Kafr El-Sheikh Governorate to develop and evaluate the performance of a rice-straw bales chopper.
The field experiments were conducted to determine the suitable operation parameters to reach the straw lengths suitable for the manufacture of animal feed and compost.
The results indicated that , the optimum operation parameters were cutting-knives speed of 1260 rpm (26.4 m/s), platform tilt-angle of 20 degree, 24 cutting knives and claws (or cutting-knives) spacing of 6 cm, which gave the average cutting-length of rice straw about 5.19 cm, cutting-length percentage of rice straw < 8 cm around 74.54 %, machine productivity of 892 kg/h, power requirement about 5.05 kW and specific energy of 5.67 kW.h/t., the operation and production costs according to prices of year 2015 were 13.63 L.E./h and 15.27 L.E./ton, respectively .