Development and performance evaluation of impact bambara groundnut sheller
Loading...
Date
2007-09-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Institute of Agrophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences
Abstract
A centrifugal bambara groundnut sheller was
designed, constructed and evaluated. The sheller consists of a feed
hopper with a flow rate control device, shelling unit, separating unit
and power system. Nine different impellers were used for the
investigation at three different pod moisture contents. Results of
the performance tests were examined using a 3x3x3 factorial
design with moisture content, impeller slot angulations and number
of impeller slots as variables. Results showed that moisture
content, impeller slot angulations, number of impeller slots and
interaction between these variables statistically affected the per formance indicators (shelling efficiency, percentage of breakage,
percentage of partially shelled pods, percentage of unshelled pods
and winnowing efficiency) at the significance level of 5%. The
forward facing impeller with eight slots gave the best performance
of 96% shelling efficiency, 3.4% breakage, 0.6% partially shelled
pods. No unshelled pods were recorded, and winnowing efficiency
of 97.3% was recorded at an average feed rate of 215.8 kg h-1