Design and fabrication of an electrical-powered roasted groundnut decorticator

Abstract

Worldwide roasted groundnuts available in different packages and variations are widely consumed by people. In spite of this, effective roasted groundnut decorticating machines are not readily available in developing countries like Nigeria. Roasted groundnuts are peeled manually which does not produce large output and cannot meet market demands. The decorticating machine is designed to comprise a hopper to feed in the roasted seeds, a rotating spiked tooth drum and a blower powered by 1 HP electric motor, tripping is done by holding the seed over the spiked cylinder. The stripped kernels fall below and are collected separately. Blower is incorporated into the machine to separate lighter seeds and chaff from the peeled groundnuts. The components were designed, fabricated and assembled accordingly. Experimental runs were conducted to evaluate the performance of the machine. The results obtained indicated that the decorticator has a throughput of 16.95kg/hr. It also has peeling and material efficiencies of 90.5 and 94.75% with 5.25% damage. It can be concluded that the machine was functional.