Fabrication of Palm Nut Cracking Machine and Performance Evaluation of Cracked Nuts Parameters as Influenced by Cultivars

Abstract

Palm Nut Cracker Machine is mainly needed for the Palm Nut seeds. Palm Nut is very hard in nature and very tough to break manually with hand; hence in industrial production of palm oil a palm nut cracker machine that is able to break the palm nuts into the small pieces is usually necessary. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to fabricate a palm nut cracking machine and evaluate its performance of cracked nuts parameters as influenced by cultivars using standard methods. Data obtained shows that optimum crack efficiency of 97% was obtained at shaft speed 2600 rpm dura cultivar of 8% MC_db, 7 kg feed weight, 91% crack efficiency was obtained for tenera cultivars at 6% MC_db and 5 kg feed weight at the same shaft speed, while, crack efficiency of 87% was observed for pisifera cultivar at 6% MC_db, feed weight of 7 kg and operational speed of 2200 rpm. Optimum kernel breakage ratio % of 14.66, 21.93, and 17.24 % occurred at the experimental cracking of palm nuts dura, tenera and pisifera cultivars with corresponding feed weights 7, 5 and 6 kg, respectively. On weightier feed rates and shaft speeds, crack efficiency of machine was higher for the oil Palm nuts cultivars at lower moisture content.