Design and simulation analysis of cowpea dehulling Machine

Abstract

The dehulling of cowpea seeds will have a great influence in increasing the overall production, consumption, processing into more dietary, hygienic products and the advancement of cowpea processing industry. The technology of cowpea processing industry is still at its lowest ebb. Therefore, designing a machine to dehull cowpea beans would be of greater benefit to the common man protein intake and the afore-mentioned development of the cowpea industry. The machine is designed to be mechanically operated by an electric motor as the prime mover with dehulling capacity of 6.67x10-4m3/s or 37.2kg/min. The beans will be fed by rotating force received from the feed wheel in the hopper into the plate's gap interface that will be pre-set that the total volume of feeder is approximately the volume of the space between plate surfaces. The rotating action of moving against stationary plate effect the rasping of soaked cowpea off their cotyledons. The design consideration applied appropriate technology, ease of dehulling soaked cowpea and the attrition action of plate surfaces and readily available engineering materials with possible equipment in the country. The dehulled efficiency was 79% at 81.25% machine efficiency shown from the simulation analysis, this greatly show a high level improvement when compared with other related designs.