Seeds sorting by electrostatic separation: an experimental study

This paper is aimed at investigating the possibility of sorting wheat seeds by electrostatic separation, The seeds are charged by ion bombardment using a corona discharge in the separator. The broken and complete seeds are charged selectively according to their surface area. The mass of the broken seeds is relatively smaller than that of the complete seeds. Therefore, separation of broken seeds from complete ones is achievable because their charge-to-mass ratio differs significantly. This has been confirmed experimentally in a separator built in the laboratory. The separator is composed of three stages; namely, the charging stage by corona discharge, the separation stage by the actuating electric field and finally the collection stage for broken and complete seeds.