Performance Evaluation of a Palm Kerne Nut Cracking Machine

Abstract

Palm kernel, which is one of the by- products of palm tree is of great importance to the human race and highly sought for, because it contains oil which could be consumed directly or used as raw materials for other products. The plant is mostly found in the rain forest of Nigeria where the production ofª¤? palm kernel is not the major challenge, but the production ofª¤? clean and unbrokenª¤? kernel (high grade) to be sold to the palm kernel merchants who buy and supply to companies. The development of mobile palm kernel nut cracking machine was made to reduce drudgery, to enhance processing capacity and to determine processing loss. Palm kernel nut cracking occurs when nuts are loaded to rupture without crushing the embedded kernel. The aim of this research work was to assess the performance of the developed mobile palm kernel nut cracking machine. Total sample of four thousand (4,000) palm kernel nuts were divided into five groups of eight hundred palm kernel nuts and each group was further divided into four sub-groups of two hundred (200) palm kernel nuts.ª¤? Each group of five was fed into the hopper and cracked at different shaft speeds in revolutions per minute (rpm). The shaft speeds were determined with a tachometer and it was varied on the engine by adjusting the throttle lever. In a group of five, it was replicated for four different times at the same speed. The cracking efficiency and throughput capacity were calculated. The research work showed that the cracking efficiencies at speeds of 1200, 1800, 2200 and 2400 rpm were 98ª¤¡Þ0.3, 98.5ª¤¡Þ0.08, 98.5ª¤¡Þ0.01 and 99ª¤¡Þ0.04% respectively. The throughput of the machine increased from 10.91 to 38.00 g/s as the speed of the machine increased from 800 to 2400 rpm. Also the performance efficiencies of the developed machine were 93, 94, 95, 94.5 and 94% while the overall efficiencies were 90.86, 92.12, 93.58, 93.08 and 93.06% for the set speeds. It was concluded that the overall performance of this developed palm nut kernel cracking machine were effective because it fell within the range of betweenª¤? 90 to 98% overall efficiency.ª¤?

Advancing the Engineering Approach to Improving the Quality Cracking Efficiency of Palm Nut Crackiing Machine

“…We therefore tested the machine to investigate the effect of the beater configuration (swing beater), size (14.50 -29.43 mm for Tenera), and speed (970 -2430rpm) at moisture content of 7% (db) on the quality performance efficiency (Table 1). The effect of these operational parameters on the performance parameters such as; cracking efficiency, 𝜺 𝒄 (%) and quality efficiency 𝑄 𝑝 (%) were determined with the methods reported by Jimoh and Olukunle (2012), Udo et al (2015), Okokon et al (2015) and Idowu et al (2016)…”

“…This method is cumbersome, labour intensive and time consuming to meet the demands of the growing industry (Adebayo, 2004). The aforementioned problem has made a lot of researchers such as: Oyebanji et al ( 2012); Omoruyi and Ugwu (2015); Asibeluo and Abu (2015); Okokon et al (2015); Idowu et al(2016); and Udo et al(2015) to investigate developing a better means of cracking to eliminate the traditional method, kudos to them on the development of mechanical crackers. From their reports, there are two basic mechanical methods that can be used to crack the shell of the nut.…”

The Comparative Analysis of a Developed Swing Beater and Conventional Beater of a Palm Nut Cracking Machine

“…The other cracker is a centrifugal impact cracker that uses the principle of centrifugal force to flap the palm kernel nuts on the walls of the hopper. This method involves using a shock caused by an impact against hard objects to shear, crush and cut through the shell (Oyebanji et al, 2012;Jimoh and Olukunle, 2012;Asibeluo and Abu, 2015;Udo et al, 2015;Adejugbe et al, 2017).…”

Investigation into bevel plate optimal angle required to improve nut cracking in a centrifugal nut cracker

“…Traditional technique is carried out by stone-arrangement and mortar/pestle assembly. The exercise is crude, labour intensive, uneconomical, and harmful to the operator (Udo et al, 2015). Modern system involves the use of mechanical devices such as centrifugal crackers, horizontal crackers and roller crackers, etc.…”