Development an Indigenous Maize De-Husking Machine

Abstract

Maize post- harvest operation most especially de-husking and shelling are still a challenge in low developing countries with more efforts required in advancing the operations. The development of a maize de-husking machine was undertaken for de-husking process in a farm settlement. The developed machine used shearing action developed by a rubberized roller to achieved the maize de-husking operation. The main feature of maize de-husking machine majorly consists of four (4) basic units including, feeding unit, de-husking unit, power transmission, discharge outlet. The de-husking unit includes the rubberized and conveyor rollers and the top cover. The rubberized rollers were made from 15mm thick rubber extracted from a used tyre. The experimental treatments included two level of maize moisture (14 and 16%), three level of roller speeds (400, 500 and 600rpm) and three level of feeding rate (2,4 6, kg). The measure variable in the evaluation of the machine included de-husking capacity, de-husking efficiency, grain loss. the factors were selected to investigate the influence of the machine variables, crop parameters ad their interaction on the machine performance. The result of the performance evaluation of the machine showed that the highest de-husking capacity, efficiency and losses were 340kg/hr, 89.94% and 9.89%, respectively. The developed maize de-husking machine can be adopted for commercial processing of maize.