Development of a clean-cut cocoa pod splitter

Sahirin, Khairul Azraai (2019) Development of a clean-cut cocoa pod splitter. [Project Paper] (Submitted)

Text lp FK 2019 37.pdf Download (3MB)

Abstract

A clean-cut cocoa pod splitter is a simple machine fabricated from mild steel. It has a simple design and a user-friendly mechanism that can accommodate different sizes of cocoa pod. The feeding of pod into the disc blade is by manually pushing the pod in an endwise direction into the blade vertically. It will split pod one at a time and requires one operator to operate it. The clean-cut cocoa pod splitter was tested at the Technology Workhop Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia. The purpose was to evaluate its performance on the basis of their efficacy and the quality of the resultant beans. The parameters measured for testing the performance the machine are the time taken to split cocoa pod and the proportion of bean components by total bean weight. The sizes of cocoa pod was also measured. Two different cutting speeds of 350 rpm and 525 rpm were used to carry out the test. The experiment showed that cutting speed had significant effect on the mass of bean recovered, mass of bean damaged and mass of misplaced bean. Increasing the rotational speed from 350 rpm to 525 rpm reduced the cutting torque from 10.17 Nm to 6.78 Nm. The machine had a size of 25 inch × 36 inch × 28 inch. From the results, the average time taken to split five cocoa pod samples on each test using disc blade speed 350 rpm is 7.42 sec and using 525 rpm takes 6.33 sec to split the pods. The comparison between 350 rpm and 525 rpm cutting speeds in five samples on each test shows that the recover bean are 94.75% and 93.10%, damaged bean 3.50% and 5.45% and misplaced bean 1.75% and 1.45% respectively. This mechanically simple machine based on splitting of pods can recover bean up to 93%.

Item Type:	Project Paper
Faculty:	Faculty of Engineering
Depositing User:	Ms Siti Mariam Giman
Date Deposited:	22 Nov 2022 02:43
Last Modified:	22 Nov 2022 02:43
URI:	http://psaspb.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/482

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