Prototype Machine for Separating Palm Fruits from Husks

The traditional method for separating palmyra palm fruit from its husk is to boil the ripe fruits and use a spoon to scrape out the flesh, which can then be sold or processed into various types of desserts. This process separating the fruit is a laborious, time-consuming task that requires manual work. In order to solve this problem a team of twins, fourth-year student in the department of agricultural engineering, faculty of engineering, Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi, designed and invented a machine for separating the palm fruits from their husks.

“From our background research, we learned about the size of palm fruits being sold in the market, the physiology of the fruit, and problems related to preparing them for consumption. Then, we came up with a concept for inventing the machine, which comprises the flesh separating component, feeding channel, output channel, and the 1HP motor,” said the team members, Suppanat and Sukrit Soimaen, with Assist. Prof. Dr. Jaturong Lankapin and Assist. Prof. Purin Akkarakulthon as advisors.

To use the machine, feed ripe palm fruits into the front feeder, followed by fresh water. The fruits will by transported to the separating component. Once separated, the flesh will be delivered to the front. Initial testing revealed that the prototype works well at 280 cycles per minute, can separate up to 96.8% of the fruit, at the rate of 37.9 kilograms per hour. The machine’s electrical consumption is 0.72Kwatt per hour. Further calculations showed that if the prototype was turned on 1,440 hours per year, the operation cost will be 3 baht per kilogram. Break-even point is 40 days, at 32 hours per year of usage.

This is a innovation that can be adapted for real usage, in order to save man power. Interested farmers or business owners, please contact Suppanat at 083 754 6684 and Sukrit at 087 8909749 for more details.