Flax deseeding is considered one of the most important operations among
the crop processing sequence. Deseeding is still done using manual method
especially at the small holdings, through two stages: hacking or capsules stripping
followed by capsules threshing, which is time consuming, costly, and accompanied by
high losses of seeds and straw (fiber). Since flax Is grown in Egypt for both seeds and fibers, the main goal of
farmers is to obtain the seeds with minimum losses and maintain the heighest fiber
quality. The present work was devoted to study the engineering factors affecting
deseeding process to obtain the data needed to design and develop the proper
deseeding mechanisms either for stationary or combine harvesters. Three commonly
system used for flax deseeding were: flax deseeding machine then cleaning using
traditional winnowing machine (M1), flax deseeding and winnowing with one machine
(M2) and, traditional method using tractor then cleaning with traditional winnowing
machine (M3). Results indicated that, The capacity of M1, M2 and M3 were 0.5, 1.5,
and 0.2 MgJh, respectively. The minimum seed loss was 2 % for the M2, while the
corresponding value for M1 was 5 %. The maximum seed loss was 30 % using M3
s)'$tem. The cleaning efficiency obtained for M1 and M2 were 92% and gsQ"
respecitvely. The cleaning effidency for M3 system was 87 %. Moreover, it decreased
the fiber yield by 25%. The operating cost was found to be120, 100 and 320 LElfeddan for M1, M2
and M3 system respectively.