Design and fabrication of a motorised orange juice extractor machine.

Abstract

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) explains the losses caused by the local farmers' post-harvest processing of the food. Fruit post-harvest losses are more severe in developing nations than they are in industrialized nations. In order to reduce hunger and malnutrition, it is necessary to find strategies to save the world's food supply given the recent rapid population growth in the world's poorest nations, where there is currently a food shortage. Therefore, over ripening and rotting of citrus perishable nature has caused local Ugandan farmers challenges. Additionally, local famer’s inability to pay high price of importing juice extractor has worsened the problem, hence there is need to look for an alternative juice extractor from locally available materials in order to reduce or eliminate the difficulty encountered in extracting juice by local means from citrus fruits especially orange. The goal of this project is to design; build and testing of orange juice extractor machine that will reduce post-harvest losses of rotting and over ripening in oranges during the high peak harvest. The design includes of important components and system units like the screw conveyor, a motor, frame, shafts, locking nuts and bolts, cutting blades, V-BELTS, motor stand, washing unit, hopper, cutting unit, extraction compression chamber, conveying unit, squeezing unit, juice collector, juice outlet, waste outlet, perforated cylindrical sieve, internal sieve and bearings. The project has been conducted by fabricating the machine in Munyengera agro machinery workshop based on theoretical design work. Materials for the fabrication of the orange juice extractor was obtained locally. The major materials used are stainless steel, aluminium alloy and mild steel because of the food safety aspect of the machine was taken into consideration. After fabrication, the machine was tested. Key words are: Design, fabrication and juice extractor using the locally available materials.