Design and fabrication of a fish feed mixing cum pelleting machine for small-medium scale aquaculture industry

Abstract

Abstract The study developed a compact, single unit of fish feed mixing and pelleting machine. In this work, a compact fish feed mixing and pelleting machine was designed, fabricated, and evaluated for its performance efficiency. The basic units of the machine are the processing unit, structural support, and the prime mover. The major component of the feed substrates used were maize, fish meal, soya bean cake, blood, and bone meal in their varied proportions blended with wet cassava starch to establish the machine performance and efficiency. The results showed that the varied proportions of starch inclusion in the blended substrate have influence on the investigated machine performance parameters. The performance outputs from the machine revealed the highest pelleting efficiency of 80.36%, pellet durability of 98.74%, throughput capacity of 4.16 kg/h, and the least labour requirement of 0.23 man-hour per kg at a starch inclusion of 0.125 kg, while the highest pellet bulk density of 0.302 g/cm3 was recorded at 0.20 and 0.125 kg starch addition. Machine economic analysis revealed that it can be of benefit for small- to medium-scale fish feed farmers.