Development and Evaluation of Palmyrah (Borassus Flabellifer L.) Fruit Pulp Extractor.

Palmyrah (Borassus flabellifer L) fruit pulp is available abundantly and has a high potential for food in rural areas, useful for pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications, however, the main hindrance for this pulp is lack of mechanization and availability of pulp in sufficient quantity at one place. The pulp of this fruit is usually used by rural communities where the processors use manual pulping, which is not only time-consuming but yields seasonally during July and August in India. Therefore, the objective of this work was to design, develop and evaluate the efficiency of fruit pulp extractors. The pulper was designed and developed such way that to be compact and easy to operate, consisting of the main housing with stainless steel teeth on a rotating shaft and pulping performed by beating and shearing. The performance evaluation of the machine was carried out at different rpm (320, 360, 410) input capacity (8, 10 and 12 kg) for fixed time of operation is 6 minutes. The pulp weight was evaluated during the pulping process period. The highest pulping efficiency (84.78%) and pulp recovery (33.9%) was obtained rpm of 410, with 6 minutes of pulping, and batch capacity of 10 kg of fruits which resulted in a capacity of 50 kg fruits per hour. This high efficiency makes this mechanized effective for pulping palmyrah fruits and, thus, it can replace manual pulping, especially in rural communities involved with the palmyrah fruit pulping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]