Design and Fabrication of a Palm Fruit Digester

This work presents the design and fabrication of a palm fruit digester. The need for a more efficient process for extracting palm oil has made researchers sought for a palm fruit digester that can carry out the extraction process without breaking its nuts or having low belt drive. Hence, for an efficient palm oil extraction system, a proper design that can guarantee capacity and efficiency is fabricated. Critical studies have shown that horizontal digesters are efficient but are usually accompanied by low belt drive, while on the other hand, the vertical digester are also efficient but breaks up nut when breaking up oil bearing cells. In order to increase the efficiency of the extraction process, the use of belt is eliminated and replaced with direct coupling. The design made use of Autodesk inventor professional software to produce the CAD model of the machine. From the design analysis, the machine frame has a bending value of 1.742e-02mm and with the displacement value of 1.742e-02mm while the average performance of the machine determined was 485.25 Kg/h and 78.74%, for the throughout and efficiency respectively.