IMPROVEMENT OF LOCALLY MANUFACTURED EQUIPMENT FOR NON-STANDARD OAT PROCESSING

Analysis of the existing oat groat and Hercules flakes production processes suggests that oat processing technology largely corresponds to the conventional technologies prescribed in the applicable regulatory documentation. This process only allows for processing oat grains which conform to standard specifications. Use of off-spec grain results in production of low grade or non-conformant products, which considerably reduces the profit margin of such processing. This paper presents results of studies on non-standard oat grains processing. This grain differs from standard type in moisture content, in mass fraction of double grains, in mass fraction of small grains, and in grain admixture content (grain mixtures). A distinctive feature of the technologies we propose is the lack of this grain preparation stage preceeding the processing part. Use of the proposed technologies allows to increase both utilization and profitability of oat processing and groat production facilities. Our findings suggest that the proposed technologies provide considerable advantages. We have calculated the economic effectiveness of processing grains with four types of non-conformity. We demonstrated that use of this technology allows to reduce production costs of non-standard grain processing in producing Hercules oat flakes by up to 17.8% and result in a fully conformant product.