THREE-ROLLER CEREAL MILL USING TRIANGULAR ROLL CONFIGURATION
ABSTRACT Roller mills are widely used for cracking, crimping, flaking, granulating, grinding, and crumbling cereals. For each grinding, a pair of horizontal rolls are used. In a two-high machine, two pairs of rolls are used, one pair above the other. Three-high and four-high mills are also sometimes used for feed processing. In flour milling, many pairs of rolls are used in succession, each pair making the particles smaller. In this study, a new type of roller mill was designed and tested by using three, equal size, cylindrical rolls with their centers placed approximately on the vertices of an equilateral triangle positioned like an inverted pyramid. The rotation of the rolls allowed the material to draw in at the top nip and to discharge at one of the other two nips. Size reduction was accomplished at the top and at the discharge nips. The results clearly demonstrate the technical feasibility of accomplishing two size reductions by using three rolls instead of the existing four-roll system. Particle analysis showed a uniform product size with a very small deviation