Development of an improved groundnut oil kneading machine for women processors

Abstract

Groundnut oil extraction in Nigeria suffer a lot of drudgery, the locally produced product suffers among which are low extraction capacity, unhygienic and time wastage although, several effort has been made on development of ground nut kneading machine. This work was an improved design of groundnut kneading machine carried out. To remedy the challenges faced by the existing machine, the components designed include the oil kneading container, the scrappers and the shaft. Based on the power requirement and the factor of safety, the prime mover was selected. The groundnut kneading machine was constructed using readily available and appropriate materials including mild steel sheet, medium carbon grade steel, stainless steel sheet, stainless steel flat bar and angle iron. Performance test was carried out to evaluate the performance of developed machine. The highest mean machine output capacity 19.93 kg/h was obtained at the combination of 60 ⁰C temperature, three fingers and a speed of 350 rpm. These results show a remarkable improvement on the performance indices over the existing kneader designs and hence it recommended for small-scale groundnut oil extractor for optimum production.