COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PERFORMANCE METRICS IN PALM KERNEL CRACKERS WITH FOUR-ARM HAMMER BEATER MECHANISMS

The effects of a four-arm hammer cracker/ beater on the performance of a newly developed palm kernel cracking machine has been investigated. The work evaluated the performance of the machine with the four arm hammer head attached to it under constant load test. The shaft cracking speed was however, varied from 800 -1600 rpm during this period several parameters were measured. The result showed that as the shaft speed was increasing the cracking time of the palm kernel shells was decreasing. The shortest cracking time of 29.20 seconds occurred at a shaft speed of 1600 rpm while processing 3000g of palm kernels. At a shaft speed of 800 rpm the number of whole nuts was 473, this number increased to 529 at 1000 rpm and continued to decrease to 209 at 1600 rpm. At a shaft speed of 800 rpm the number of un-cracked nut was 21 as the speed continue to increase the number of un cracked nut decreased to 11 at 1000 rpm and continue to decrease to 1 at 1600 rpm, which means as the speed increases the number of un-cracked nut decreases. The work also discovered that the highest effective capacity using the four-arm hammer beater was 102.74 and occurred at the shaft speed of 1600 rpm, likewise the highest cracking efficiency of 99.84 occurred at 1600 rpm. The highest performance efficiency of 82.66 however, occurred at the four-arm hammer speed of 1000 rpm, considering other measured parameters like, number of whole nuts, number of broken nuts, performance efficiency, split nut loss, and overall efficiency the work concluded that the best operating speed for the newly developed palm cracker machine using the four-arm hammer beater is 1000 rpm.