Development Of A Pedal Operated Breadfruit Dehulling Machine

ABSTRACT

Breadfruit (Treculia Africana) or simply breadnut is very important both as food and as a potential source of oil. The economic importance of this tropical seed on domestic and commercial basis has necessitated the development of a pedal breadfruit dehuller. that would reduce the Cost of maintaining and purchasing motorized dehuller, Solve the problem of fuel scarcity, inadequate electricity supply. In the engineering design of this machine, the action zone consisted essentially of two disk; one adjustable and the other stationary. however l he machine which is operated manually through human power of 89.48 Watt ,has a dehulling efficiency of 60%, 55% and 53% at 6.5%,8.5% and 10.5% moisture content respectively at (dry basis ) .The machine capacity was recorded as 37.5kg/h ,9.3kg/h and 4.16kg/h at 66.3 rpm, 56.7rpm and 37.5 rpm. This shows that efficiency increases with decrease in moisture content and Capacity increases with increase in speed with 1% breakage. The total cost of the machine is 65,950 Naira.