Design and construction of finger millet dehusking and cleaning machine.

Abstract

Finger millet (Eleusine coracana L.) is a grass cereal crop grown in many countries of Africa and Asia. Finger millet can be ground and cooked into cakes, puddings or porridge. The grain is made into a fermented drink (or beer) in Nepal and in many parts of Africa. The straw from finger millet is used as animal fodder. In Uganda finger millet is one of the oldest human foods and is important food for sustaining tribal population in western and northern regions of the Country. Finger millet production and value addition chain involves a number of activities right from harvesting, drying, threshing, winnowing, dehusking, cleaning and then milling to produce high quality millet flour. This project was designed and constructed to help the local farmers, small and medium scale industries to improve on the quality of their millet flour and grains which would yield high market prices hence improving their economic wellbeing and this was achieved by dehusking and cleaning the millet grains. The design of the various machine parts was carried out by analysing forces acting on them. Force analysis led to selection of proper materials to withstand the forces to avoid failure. Mild steels of various grades were the main materials recommended to be used because they are food grade, strong and durable. Engineering drawings of the various components were drawn before the various components were constructed and then machine parts fabricated. A fully functional prototype resulted after all the above operations. Testing of the prototype was carried out and the figures revealed that the machine was 79.74% efficient and 74.0 separation efficiency. The millet dehusking and cleaning machine has a total cost of 424.04$ which includes all the taxes, cost of material, machinery and hired labor to construct the machine, the cost evaluation analysis of the project was based on the payback period method, and on net present value method with NPV of 2,497.62$ over a period of three years.