ALMAZ NEW GENERATION GRAIN CLEANSING MACHINE

BY MERCY NAMFUKWE

THE 2024 Agritech Expo Zambia presented an excellent opportunity for exhibitors to showcase variety of their farm produce and innovation of new machinery.

The exhibition ranged from agriculture, machinery and various agricultural produce on display demonstrating the diversity of Zambian agriculture.

The Agritech Expo Zambia 10^thanniversary took place at the Golden Valley Research (GART) in Chisamba from 18^thto 20^th April, 2024, under the theme “Stay ahead in the industry” bought together foreign exhibitors, small scale farmers, emerging farmers and government officials to interact and exchange knowledge on how agricultural innovations can improve lives of farmers.

One of the challenges faced by farmers is lack of machinery causing significant repercussion on agricultural productivity and food which hinders production and makes work slow for farmers who use hands on in their farming business due to lack of machines.

Interestingly, ALMZ manufacturing company from Russia came to the Expo and showcased a Novel separating machine that separates grain according to its biological value into seed, food and fodder within single operation.

The heart of the machine is a jet generator powered by a medium pressure fan and air jets that are able to perform power scanning of each particle of the grain flow coming from the hopper-feeder depending on the specific weight, size, surface roughness and geometry of each particle and grain mass is separated into fractions.

Furthermore, the machine is able to separate seed grain by specific weight and selects homogeneous grain with maximum germination energy and growth strength with low energy consumption from1.2KW (capacity 4t/h) to 37.25 KW (capacity 100t/h).

Chief and Eagle limited Director General Dr. Musamba Kah, says the New Novel separating machine is a great innovation for seed separation of best seed material from edible fraction, damaged fraction with efficiency energy saving and less time consuming.

He said the machine only uses a fun to spread the feeding material of any type of seeds and the smallest machine can process 4 tons per hour of the initial product to get to 2 tons of the best seed material.

He explained that when a farmer uses nets or a table the machine can only process up to 1.5 tons per hour and has moving parts for greasing and maintenance, hence the user can change the type of grain like Maize to soybean and the lightest ones that are not easy to work with, by changing the net and setting the airflow for it to work with any type of crop.

Further, the Novel separating machine can separate bad grains from maize, rice, wheat, sunflower noting that the machine has the potential to work in industrial environment and mining sectors to separate deferent materials giving people flexibility, more money and less time consuming.

“The machine has been in existence in Russia for over 20 years and it is a new machine in Zambia and it will be a game changer to all crop processing companies in Zambia,” he stated.

The uniqueness of the novel separating machine is its high technological capacity of selecting 3^rdto 4^th class grains from 5^th class wheat if present and also able to separate rotten corn from good ones by specific weight of the grain without grain damage.

Due to its multifunctionality, it does not require expensive skilled maintenance or consumables noting that it does not require the need to select and replace sieves for each crop as it is able to process practically all types of agricultural crops from small seeds to corn, legumes and walnuts.

The novel separating machine has a significant value to help farmers as it economically viable to be able to separate crops and increasing value of their crops when priced on the on the market, hence farmers can make ‘more money due to its fast and portability of the machine.

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