Performance Evaluation of the Enset Decorticator Machine and comparison of the end product with manual decortication method

Abstract

Enset is perennial herbaceous root crop and about twenty percent of Ethiopia’s population used Enset for human food, fiber, animal forage, construction materials, and medicines. Decortication of this crop was mostly by traditional methods. This traditional method is inefficient, unhygienic, gender based, less productive and time consuming. To alleviate this problem, the way aimed for developing engine driven Enset decorticator. Therefore the objective this study was to determine the performance of the constructed enset decorticated machine in Wolkite University. The decorticating machine consists of cylindrical shaped drum, blade, inclined plate, storage device, output holes and 6.5 horsepower diesel engine. The developed diesel engine motor driven decorticator was tested in the laboratory and field. In laboratory test machine checked its specification and operational test. The result revealed that, at drum speed 1200 rpm the machine had maximum decorticating efficiency, fiber cleaning efficiency and lower un-decorticated sheath which was 95.35%, 93.16% and 6.15% respectively. When compared with traditional methods, the end product of the manual decorticated kocho can ferment faster than machine decorticated due to high value of PH, which had mean result of 5.69 and 5.01 respectively. And the time required to finish single sheath machine consume less time than manual method of decortication which has mean value of 0.25 sec and 1.14 sec respectively

Keywords: Decortication, Enset, Performance, speed