ABSTRACT

This work centers on the design, development and performance evaluation of grain slurry dewatering developed using locally-available materials which comprises of hollow shaft bearing auger conveyor, centrifugal barrel and an electric motor. The machine is designed on a continuous concept of production, applying the technique of centrifugal separation in separating grain slurry filtrate by centrifugal force which subjects the dispersed particles to forces greatly exceeding gravity which vividly increases the rate of separation putting into consideration their density difference(water and maize slurry) and are collected at their different outlet. It also eliminates human contact and time associated by sedimentation followed by decantation in traditional slurry food processing methods. The performance evaluation revealed 63.75% separation efficiency, 100.27kg/h throughput and 76.25% recovering efficiency after several trial test. The separation rate of this machine is dependent on the speed of the barrel since faster separation is enabled through centrifugal force. Thus, this innovation is energy ,time saving and also improves hygiene in the slurry food production since it separate an average of 100.27kg of maize filtrate per hour while manually, an individual sedimentation of an average of 2.64kg maize filtrate paste per hour with separation efficiency of 57.03%.