Groundnut decorticator: Rubber coated shelling unit

Groundnut shelling is done either by hand shelling or by hand, pedal and power operated decorticators. Manual method of shelling, which is time consuming and tedious job. Whereas power operated decorticators have these facilities. The remaining components of the developed power operated groundnut decorticator, such as the concave sieve, cylinder, hopper, material receiving tray, blower, power transmission system and main frame were developed accordingly to specifications. For the performance evaluation of the developed power operated decorticator in terms of decorticating capacity, output capacity, decorticating efficiency, cleaning efficiency, percent broken kernels and percent unshelled pods, various speed of cylinder, concave clearance and types of blades were used. In rubber coated blade, decorticating efficiency and cleaning efficiency were determined for concave clearances of 15, 20, and 25 mm, 96.2 %, 97.2 %, 94.8 % and 91.41 %, 95.27 %, 96.09 %, respectively. Decorticating capacity and percent of broken kernels were determined for clearances of 15, 20, and 25 mm, 95.23 %, 86.25 %, 78.94 % and 11.84 %, 9.11 %, 7.95 %, respectively.