Development, Construction, and Testing of a Dehulling Machine

Traditional methods of dehulling legumes and cereals such as sorghum, cowpea, maize, and groundnuts rely heavily on manual techniques, including palm rubbing and the use of pestle and mortar, which are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and inefficient. In this study, these limitations are addressed by designing, fabricating, and rigorously testing a novel motorized dehulling machine specifically tailored for legumes (cowpea and groundnut) and cereals (maize and sorghum). Operating on abrasion and centrifugal force principles, the machine effectively separates hulls from kernels through shear and impact interactions within the dehulling chamber. The motorized dehuller demonstrates significant advancements in dehulling efficiency and speed, achieving maximum efficiency of 85% for groundnuts in just 3 minutes, 81.3% for cowpeas over the same duration, and 64.3% and 83.3% for sorghum dehulling at 3 and 20 minutes, respectively. With a feed rate capacity of 4 kg of seeds every two minutes, this machine significantly improves over traditional manual methods by drastically reducing the time and effort required while maintaining high performance. Moreover, the design underscores the feasibility of developing high-performance agricultural machines using locally available materials and accessible technology, making it a transformative step toward modernizing small-scale agricultural processing.