Multipurpose Fruit Juice Machine for Preventing Fruit Wastage in Nigeria Villages

Abstract

Fruits are produced in large quantities in developing countries because of the favourable climatic conditions but the level of spoilage is high. It is essential to extract and preserve fruit juice to have a regular supply throughout the year. Therefore, it was necessary to develop a machine that could be used to extract juice from several fruits. Thus, the objective of the research work was to develop a multipurpose small scale fruit juice machine that could be adopted by an average farmer in the rural regions to increase their juice intake. A fruit juice extractor was designed, developed and tested. The machine utilised a serrated auger for crushing the fruits before squeezing out the juice. The performance evaluation showed that the machine has an extraction capacity of 88.4 kg h-1 and 84.5 kg h-1 for pineapple and sweet orange respectively. The efficiencies of the juice extractor for pineapple and sweet orange were 91.13% and 85.96% respectively. The average production cost of the machine was estimated as 390 US dollars.