OPTIMIZATION OF CRACKING PERFORMANCE FOR DURA, TENERA, AND MIXED PALM NUTS

This research focused on evaluating the comparison in throughput capacity and whole kernel recovery during cracking operation of Dura, Tenera and Mixed Varieties of Palm Nut. One thousand three hundred and fifty (1350) samples of 1000g each of fresh palm nuts were used for the experiment, 450 samples were dura, 450 samples tenera and 450 samples were mixed varieties. 150 samples were selected for each experimental run. Three (3) sets of runs were carried out for each variety at the same condition. The samples after drying to specified levels of moisture content, were cracked at 5 different speeds with 5 levels of feed rate. Mean values for each variety was computed and used for statistical analysis. Comparative analysis shows that mixed variety have significant variation of the percentage whole kernel recovery of 48.04 to 97.06%, while tenera variety have significant variation of the throughput capacity of 99.23 to 476.19kg/h. For dura variety, the highest whole kernel recovery of 90.35% was obtained at the cracking speed of 1600rpm, moisture content of 18.1% w.b and feed rate of 360kg/h, all at 0.05 level of significance. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and result of the pairwise comparisons for variables in the three varieties of palm nut revealed that the effects of cracking speed, moisture content and feed rate on the performance parameters are statistically significant at 0.05 level of significance