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Sugar Beet Equipment

Combine, tractor, and grain truck harvest sugar beets. Sugar beet equipment is used to harvest, clean, receive, and store beetroots, which, along with sugarcane, provide more than 70 million tons of sugar to the world annually. The bulk of this work is accomplished using a sugar beet harvester, which is a large combine that tops, lifts, and cleans beetroots. Working in tandem with this harvester is receiving equipment to further clean the beets, in addition to piling and moving them in large volumes.

Modern Harvesters

Sugar beet harvesters today are available in one- to six-row sizes, and can harvest up to 20 to 24 acres (8.1 to 9.7 ha) per day in good conditions. Some of the largest models are capable of harvesting 500 tons in 10 hours. Today’s machines are hydraulic and include grab roll screens, which remove dirt clods and rocks, as well as row finders. In some areas, beetroot harvesting is performed 24 hours a day, with two or more crews working in shifts to operate harvesting machi-

nery.

Harvesting machines are either power take-off driven, or self-propelled. The latter machines comprise built-in self-unloading tanks, eliminating the need for an additional tractor or trailer for transportation of the beets. Regardless of the unloading method, the harvesting procedure always generally entails topping and lifting the beets to be moved for processing, and is carried out us-

ing several components.

Disc Coulter

Commonly, sugar beet harvesters include a flat or concave disc coulter. Running ahead of the topping unit, the coulter clears leaves and other material from the path of the topping knife to prevent any blockage.

Topping

Topping a sugar beet is necessary, as the leafy tops, often used for livestock feed, must be se-

parated from the valuable roots. Beets must be topped in such a way that the entire crown of gre-

en leaves is removed. The modern topping mechanism, normally driven by one of the harvester’s land wheels, is comprised of a spring-loaded feeler and a horizontal knife. The spring is necessa-

ry in order to enable the topper to float over the crop, allowing the feeler wheel to rise and fall with the heights of the beet. Adjusting the tension on the spring enables the feeler wheel either to press heavily or lightly on the crop. On bulky beet tops, the spring’s tension should be reduced so the feeler wheel’s weight can be applied to the beet, helping to hold it in position while the knife tops the crown. The knife can be raised and lowered; the clearance between the knife and the feeler wheel determines how the beet will be topped.

Once a row of beets is topped, the leftover material must be moved away so that the tops are not lifted with the roots. This is accomplished with the use of a flail device, positioned at the back of the topping device or directly before the lifter. The flail consists of a chain- or power-driven steel disc with rubber flails that sweep across a row and flick sugar beet crowns from a row.

Lifting

Harvesters are outfitted with a lifting device in the form of steel shares, positioned ahead of the main elevator. These shares enable the beets, after being removed from the soil, to pass directly onto the elevator. By pressing the soil downward at the sides of the sugar beets, allowing the beet to rise up the shares and onto the elevator.

When lifting shares are not employed, a pair of large metal wheels is used to squeeze the beet from the ground. These wheels in this device, known as Oppel wheels, are placed approximately in the same position as the lifting shares would be. Additionally, the Oppel wheels rotate in order to assist the tractor pulling the harvester.

Cleaning and Elevating

A typical method to remove clinging soil from a lifted beet is to use agitating devices (прила-ди для струшування). While a beet is being elevated, the agitation of the open-type elevating web causes the beet to bounce, shedding its dirt through the web and back onto the field. Alter-

natively, a harvester can be outfitted with a stationary web positioned above a moving elevator. As a result, the beet rolls between the two units and up the elevator, being scrubbed by the eleva-

tor links. Once the beets are cleaned and elevated, they are dropped onto a cross elevator, to be moved into a trailer moving beside the harvester, or, in the case of a tanker model, into the har-

vester’s tank.

Self-propelled Harvesters

As mentioned, several types of self-propelled sugar beet harvesters are available. These models include tanks ranging in capacity from 2,204 to 7,716 pounds (1,000 to 3,500 kg). The weight of these powerful, high-output machines when carrying a load of beets often makes it difficult to travel through wet soil, limiting their production capabilities.

Multi-row Harvesters

Occasionally, the sugar beet harvesting operating makes use of more than one machine. For ex-

ample, one unit might top several rows of beetroots, while another unit lifts and windrows the topped rows. A third machine would then be used to elevate the windrow into a trailer.

Modern Receiving Equipment

The receiving equipment available today can load or pile large truckloads of beetroots every few minutes, typically 250 tons an hour, resulting in 5,000 to 6,000 tons of beets per day. These ma-

chines include large cleaning devices to carry out a secondary cleaning of the roots, as the har-

vester may not have cleaned all foreign materials from the beets.

Cleaning

The most popular type of cleaning screen today, known as the grab roll screen, is comprised of a slanting row of scrolled and smooth rolls. These rolls, perpendicular to the travel direction of the beets, turn at different speeds; scrolled rolls turn faster than smooth rolls. Beets are bounced and rolled, being scrubbed clean as a result; dirt and other foreign material is sucked through the rolls and collected into a hopper.

Piling

Today’s high-speed pilers, comprised of long booms, are able to make piles of sugar beets over 200 feet (61 m) wide at the base, and over 20 feet (6.1 m) high. These massive piles generally contain between 70,000 and 90,000 tons of beets. Today’s receiving stations have several mo-

vable pilers located within them, and can accommodate large quantities of beets. Additionally, some receiving stations have stationary belt systems and conveyors to pile or store large volumes of beets in bins.