Development and Performance Evaluation of Screw-like Fish Meal Pelletizer

Abstract

Aquaculture farming requires good and balanced meal for the fish to stay healthy. Several fish meal pelletizing machines have been designed and developed in Nigeria. This study is to contribute to the improvement of existing design models through designing, fabricating and performing evaluation tests on the machine. The average discharge efficiency, percentage loss due to residue ingredients and production rate for the machine under study after four runs for 5 kg fish meal ingredients weight was processed for 2.5 minutes was 92.25 %, 7.75 % and 110.7 kg/hr, respectively. It was discovered that as the drying days increase, the percentage moisture content removal increases for the two categories of pelletized fish meal weight (4.6 kg and 4.65 kg) considered while the weight of the pelletized fish meal reduces after drying. Linear regression models were derived for the two pelletized fish meal categories so that at any particular day, an estimated value of percentage moisture content removed and weight of the pelletized fish meal after drying can be obtained. This machine will be of great assistant to medium and small scale aquaculture farmers, thereby reducing the need for foreign sources of fish meal in fish farming sector.