Sorting of palm nuts from palm fruit cake, a byproduct obtained after palm oil has been extracted from the batch of digested palm fruit, is burdensome especially to small-scale entrepreneurs involved in palm oil processing business in Africa. This paper has triumphed over the perceived difficulties by using the knowledge of processing engineering to design pilot nut/fibre separator that can efficiently and speedily sort out nuts from nut/fibre mesh. Basic design considerations necessary to achieve reliability of the machine are discussed. Performance evaluation data from the machine obtained were related to its industrial correlate and, in particular, the van der Waerden Normal Scores test carried out inclined us to accept, at a p-value of 0.941, the null hypothesis of no significant difference in processing time between the pilot nut/fibre separator and its industrial counterpart.
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