Development and testing of an automated grain drinks processing machine

The research work was conducted to develop an automated grain drinks processing machine capable of integrating several operations (blending of soaked grains, mixing the slurry, extracting the aqueous liquid and discharging of the paste out of the machine) together and finished in one go. Fundamental design analysis and calculations were carried out in order to determine and select materials of appropriate strength and sizes for the machine component parts. The major machine parts include hopper, delivery tube, blending chamber, blade, conical centrifugal basket, electric motors and control system. The results of testing of the machine using soya beans revealed that blending efficiency of 85.52% was obtained from combination of 3 blades assembly, basket with half angle of 30 and speed of 1400 rpm. The optimisation of the machine parameters using response surface methodology produced optimum paste expelling efficiency of 94.89% with desirability of 94.3% from combination of 3-blades assembly, basket of half angle of 50 degrees and speed of 1400 rpm. The speed of rotation and basket angle has positive significant effects on the paste expelling efficiency while blade number has insignificant effect. Paste expelling efficiency increase with both increased in speed of rotation and basket angle. The machine capacity and cost of production are 100 L per hour and $ 1670 respectively. (C) 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.