Design and construction of a portable manually operated orange juicer.

Abstract

A portable manually operated orange juice extractor was designed, constructed and tested. In Uganda, orange juice is obtained through hand pressing and use of electric orange juicers. The hand pressing method is tedious, time consuming and yield low quantities of orange juice. Using electric juicers requires access to grid power; which is not available to populations in rural areas of Uganda. Industrial orange juice extractors requite heavy capital investment which is not favorable for small scale orange juice processors. The portable manually operated orange juicer was designed and constructed to save time, increase orange juice extraction efficiency and extraction capacity. The performance evaluation was carried using oranges from Syaule market in Busitema. Results showed that the orange juicer had an efficiency of 70.4% and an extraction capacity of 0.656l/hr.