Development and Performance Evaluation of a Power Operated Rubber Sheller Bar Type Groundnut Decorticator-Cum-Cleaner

Decortication or shelling is an operation in which the shells of groundnut are separated with least damage to kernels or seeds and it involves a lot of drudgery when done manually. Decortication of groundnut is an essential operation prior to use of kernel in any form. Kernel breakage is an important parameter for developing a suitable groundnut decorticator. An attempt was therefore taken in the Department of Farm Machinery and Power, OUAT, Bhubaneswar during 2012–13 to develop a groundnut decorticator as a modification to the existing 1 hp power operated commercially available groundnut decorticator for reduced breakage percentage and energy consumption, increased shelling efficiency, cleaning efficiency and germination percentage. To start with, the moisture content and feed rate of existing cast iron sheller bar type groundnut decorticator were optimized for better performance for the variety TMV-2. There after, the performance of both cast iron and modified rubber sheller bar type groundnut decorticator was studied and compared. From the analysis of data, it was found that the optimized moisture content and feed rate of groundnut pods for getting better performance of existing cast iron sheller bar type decorticator were respectively in the range of 8–9% (db) and 38–40 kg/h. Similarly, while comparing between the existing and modified rubber sheller bar type groundnut decorticators, it was found that there was only 2.83% decrease of shelling efficiency, 49.27% decrease of breakage percent, 0.16% increase of cleaning efficiency, 42.10% decrease of energy consumption and 1.03% increase of germination percent. The output of the modified rubber sheller bar type groundnut decorticator was found to be about 36.5 kg/h.