A Comparative Study of the Performance and Efficacy of Different Types of Hammer Beater Heads Used in a Newly Developed Palm Kernel Nut Cracking Machine

Abstract

A newly developed palm kernel nut cracking machine was developed at the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Uyo, the work was aimed at alleviating the difficulties faced by farmers in cracking their palm kernels manually. To further increase the efficiency and the capacity of the developed machine a study was carried out on the machine using 2-arm hammer beater, 3-arm hammer beater, and 4-arm hammer beater to establish the best beater that will result in high capacity and efficiency while using the palm kernel nut cracker. The research work which was titled ‘’A comparative Study of the Performance and Efficiency of Different Types of Hammer Beater Heads Used in a Newly Developed Palm Kernel Nut Cracking Machine’’ was successfully completed. The three different hammer beaters were tested on the newly developed palm kernel cracker and the result showed that in all the parameters tested none could emerge the overall best. However the work discovered that the best operating speed for all the three beaters was 1000rpm, for shorter cracking time the 4-arm hammer beater was the best, for least number of unbroken nuts 2-arm beater was the best, for highest number of cracked nuts 4-arm hammer beater was the best, for number of un-cracked nut, 4-arm beater had the least, and finally the result showed that 2-arm hammer beater had the highest overall efficiency of 88.37% , and 4-arm hammer beater had the best effective capacity. This variations notwithstanding the 2-arm hammer beater out-performed the others in many of the measured parameters and is recommended for the newly developed machine.