Semi-automated de-husking machine for coconut industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Coconut is one of the major perennial plantation crops in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, Coconuts play an important role in the daily life of Sri Lankans because most of the Sri Lankan cuisines are made by using coconut milk, coconut oil and scraped coconut. Therefore, all the processes of the coconut processing cycle of the coconut industry including coconut de-husking have become very important. Moreover, labour shortage is a major problem in manual de-husking which is one of the most important stage of coconut processing. A manual de-husking is a very tedious and unsafe work; also likely to cause health problems like back pain. Therefore, people are reluctant to engage in de-husking and employers cannot meet their production targets regularly. The aim of this project was to develop an efficient, semi-automated coconut de-husking machine for Sri Lankan coconut industry. The machine consists of two rollers rotating in opposite directions having number of rectangular steel bars connected to the circumference of the rollers in axial direction and top of these two rollers there is a rotating flat rubber belt to press and hold the nut while it is in the de-husking process. The husk is gripped by these rollers and starts to peel with the further rotation of rollers. Then, the de-husked coconut feeds into another rotating roller mechanism which removes the remaining part of the husk (Mudda). The movement of the coconut is facilitated by spiral shaft fixed along the two rollers. The capacity of the developed de-husker is 1200 nuts per hour with 2% of nut breakage. The nut breakage percentage is significantly lower than that of existing machines in the industry.