Design and Fabrication of Sugarcane Juice Extractor Machine for Small Scale Industries

Abstract

Sugarcane milling is a unit operation that is fundamental for making sugarcane juice available for different purpose. The present existing sugarcane juice extractors require high energy and complicated mills, driven mechanically. These are out of the reach of small scale and rural farmers that are currently involved in processing of sugarcane juice into ethanol, brown sugar and other related products in Nigeria. This research work is aimed at designing, fabricating and carrying out performance evaluation of a small scale sugarcane juice extraction machine, taking into consideration the small and micro scale farmers, and juice processors who are the target end users of the machine. The machine was constructed with materials being available locally at affordable costs, the functional parts of the machine included extraction unit, pulley, transmission belts, bearings and frame, powered by 5 hp single-phase electric motor. The machine was evaluated with two varieties of sugarcane and results show that the average extraction efficiencies for the two varieties are 64.97 % and 56.90 % respectively. The machine can be used for small scale sugarcane juice extraction in the rural and urban communities.