DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A PALMYRA PALM SEED CRACKING MACHINE

Abstract

The most common method of seed cracking which is still widely used in the some parts of Nigeria is by manually breaking the seed one at a time between the palms or using hard objects which is tedious, time consuming and ineffective. In view of the difficulties associated with palmyra palm seed processing, a machine for cracking palmyra palm prut was developed and tested taking into cognisance the engineering properries of the palmyra palm seed. The machine was evaluated using the seeds ar three different moisture content levels of8.09.7.04 and 5.50 % and machine speeds of 1100, 1200, and 1480 rpm respectively. The resr was replicated thrice. Also a model regression equarion was also developed to help predier the optimum performance of the machine. The machine had average cracking efficiency of 64.00. 80.00 and 88.00 % ar speed of 1100, 1200 and 1480 rpm respectively. However, the highest cracking efficiency of 88.00 % and lowesr kernel breaking ratio of 5.50 were observed at speed of 1480 rpm and moisture content of 5.50 %. Analysis of variance results indicate that, the interaction between the speeds and moisture content has significant effect on the cracking efficiency (P<0.005). The developed machine has a through pur capacity 160 kg per day as against the hand cracker of 4 kg per day which means that the machine could reduce drudgery, save time and encourage Palmyra palm seeds farmers to go into mess production