Design, construction and performance evaluation of a Moringa oleifera seed shelling machine

Abstract

Moringa oleifera seeds, the crop of interest in this work is an oil bearing seed which is a viable source of biodiesel. Moringa seed is an oil bearing seed with great potentials and this has necessitated the development of a machine that can be used to shell the seed. In this work, moringa seed shelling machine was designed and constructed. The major components of the machine include hopper, Tangential Impact shelling Device (TISD), screen, fan compartment and outlets for both the kernels and shells. The performance evaluation of the machine was carried out. The machine was tested by varying the moisture content of the seed from 8.43% (w.b.) to 34.59% (w.b.) at five moisture levels (viz. 8.43, 11.38, 23.69, 29.56 and 34.59%) while dependent parameters such as machine capacity, shelling efficiency, percentage whole kernel recovered, percentage broken kernel recovered, percentage unshelled seeds and overall machine efficiency were determined. The machine capacity, shelling efficiency and overall efficiency were found to have maximum values of 5.39 kg/hr, 86.00% and 57.98% respectively at different moisture content levels while the percentage whole kernel recovered, broken kernel recovered and unshelled seed recovered were found to be 52.38%, 23.00% and 7.67% respectively at various moisture content levels. The values of parameters obtained showed the varying effects of moisture content on the performance of the machine when using TISD for shelling moringa seed.