ASABE Technical Library - Abstract

Abstract. The dehulling of cowpeas is a long and tedious process which involves detaching of cotyledon from the hull. Dehulling of cowpea seeds influences the quality of the final products. Some dehulling machines have been developed by institutions like National Centre for Agricultural Mechanization, (NCAM), Ilorin and University of Ilorin, Ilorin, (Unilorin). These machines developed by these institutions do not have separating chamber for the hull and cotyledon and those that have are not functioning well. This reason prompted the need to design and fabricate an improved cowpea dehuller. An improved hydro-separating cowpea dehuller was designed, fabricated and tested. Some of the components designed for and fabricated are hopper for feeding in the material, dehulling unit where dehulling operation takes place, cleaning unit where separation of cotyledon and hull take place and the shafts for auger and agitator for transmission of power to carry out the necessary operations. The test performance carried out on the machine showed that it’s effectively dehulling the cowpea seeds and separating the hull from the cotyledon. It gave 95.06% as the highest dehulling efficiency and 70.98% as lowest dehulling efficiency of the machine. The cleaning efficiency of dehuller was 70.21%; the feed rate of the machine was 157.02kg/hr while output capacity of the machine was calculated to be 18.63kg/hr./batch.