Applied Energy 87 (2010) 762768

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Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Design, development and testing of hand-operated decorticator for Jatropha fruit

R.C. Pradhan a, S.N. Naik a,*, N. Bhatnagar b, V.K. Vijay a
a
b

Centre for Rural Development and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India
Mechanical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 11 June 2009
Received in revised form 20 September
2009
Accepted 20 September 2009
Available online 30 October 2009
Keywords:
Jatropha fruit
Moisture content
Decortications
Efciency

a b s t r a c t
Jatropha fruit, presently dehulled manually in the absence of a suitable mechanical device. Manual
decortications of Jatropha fruit for the purpose of extracting seeds is a time consuming and tedious operation. A small, continuous, hand-operated machine, specially designed and constructed for decortications
of Jatropha fruits has been done and evaluated for performance parameters. The major components of the
machine are the frame, hopper, decorticating chamber, concave sieve, rotating blades, discharge outlet
and a vibrating separator with sieve to separate seed and shell. The performance parameters of the
machine including Percentage of whole seed, broken seed, partially shelled fruit, unshelled fruit, machine
efciency and decortications efciency, were evaluated at four different moisture content (7.97%, 10.53%,
13.09% and 15.65% d.b.) with a combinations of concave clearance (18 mm, 21 mm, 24 mm and 27 mm)
between concave sieve and rotating blades. The best set of conditions under which the decorticator can
be operated is at fruit moisture content of 7.97% d.b. with concave clearance of 21 mm between the concave and the blade at which the maximum whole seeds of 67.94% can be achieved and machine efciency
of 90.96% can be obtained. All materials used for fabricating the components were brought from sourced
locally. This design is preferred, because of its rapid operation, low human-energy expenditure, low
breakage factor for the seed as well as relatively little dust being emitted during shelling; hence leading
to a relatively-healthier local atmosphere for the operator.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Self-reliance in energy is vital for overall economic development of India and other developing countries in the world. As fossil
fuels are nite sources of energy and are the major sources of
releasing sequestered carbon to atmosphere in the form of CO2
and CO which causes global warming. Therefore, the need to search
for alternative sources of energy which are renewable, safe and
non-polluting assumes top priority [1]. Biodiesel, an alternative
fuel, is technically feasible, economically competitive, environmentally acceptable and readily available [2].
Different vegetable oils are in use in various countries for biodiesel production. United States is one of the major exporter of edible oils hence it uses soyabean oil as a raw material for biodiesel
production. Rapeseed oil is in use in European countries for biodiesel production whereas tropical countries such as Malaysia use
coconut oil or palm oil for the purpose [3]. India, however is a
net importer of edible oil, hence the emphasis is on non-edible oils
from plants such as Jatropha (Jatropha curcas), Karanja (Pogamia
pinnata), neem (Azadirachta indica), mahua (Madhuca indica), simarouba (Simarouba glauca), etc., which could be utilized as a source
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 11 26591162; fax: +91 11 26591121.
E-mail address: snn@rdat.iitd.ac.in (S.N. Naik).
0306-2619/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2009.09.019

for production of oil. Among these, Jatropha is an oilseed bearing

tree, which is non-edible and widely accepted as a potential agricultural solution for subtropical and tropical locations and grown
for large-scale cultivation for production of biodiesel [4].
J. curcas L. (physic nut or purging nut) is a drought resistant
shrub or tree belonging to the family Euphorbiaceae, which is cultivated in Central and South America, South-East Asia, India and
Africa [5]. In unkept hedges, Jatropha yields around 4 tonnes of
seed ha1 [6], while under optimal conditions (depending upon local growing conditions, such as water, nutrient availability and the
absence of pests and diseases) maximum yields of up to 8 tonnes of
seed ha1 can be achieved. Jatropha seeds contain around 3040%
oil, thus, depending on seed yields, up to 2200 kg of oil ha1 can be
achieved [7]. It is well adapted to arid and semi-arid conditions and
often used for erosion control [8]. The productive lifespan of Jatropha can be 50 years. Jatropha will start to produce fruit after
6 months and the productivity will be stable after the plant is
13 years old [9].
In India Jatropha bears fruit between September and December.
Unlike most other trees fruiting in the monsoons with all the attendant difculties of collection, drying and storage, Jatropha offers a
natural advantage and the fruit can be collected during the dry season [10]. The fruit dries and the hull or shell becomes hard and
black. The dry fruits remain on the branches and contain 23 seeds.

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R.C. Pradhan et al. / Applied Energy 87 (2010) 762768

Nomenclature
AFBMA
DNMRT
d
f
F
Fs
l
M
Mc
MR
N
N0
N1
N2

anti-friction bearing manufacturers association

Duncans new multiple-range test
diameter of the shaft, cm
permissible stress, kg/cm2
force required breaking the fruit, N
shear stress of the material, kg/cm2
length of the rotating blade, cm
maximum bending moment, N m
moment of the couple, N m
bending moment, N m
revolution of blade per second
amount of fruits fed into the hopper, kg
fruits fully shelled (whole clean seed), kg
broken seed and dust, kg

N3
N4

gb
gde
gme
P
r
T
t
Te

gp
gs
gu

The fruits are hand picked or harvested by hitting the fruits with a
long stick. At times, older trees are harvested by shaking the tree/
branches. The collected fruits are sun dried for processing and decorticated manually to get the seeds [11]. The initial moisture content of dried fruit is around 7.97% d.b. and corresponding bulk
density, true density and porosity were reported as 278 kg/m3,
546 kg/m3, and 49.08% respectively. The other physical properties
of Jatropha fruit/seed/kernel are presented in Table 1 [12,13]. The
decorticated oil seed give maximum oil yield in comparison to
un-decorticated seeds [13]. The proximate composition such as
protein 23.6%, ether extract 29.8%, ask 3.2% and nitrogen free extract 21.6%, for Jatropha seed has been evaluated by Ambubode
and Fetuga [14]. The oil content of Jatropha seed ranges from
30% to 40% by weight [7,13]. The seed and the oil are toxic due
to presence of cursive and curcasive. However, from the properties
of this oil it is envisaged that the oil would be suitable as fuel oil.
Decortications is the action of separating the shell/seed coat
from the seed or kernel, prior to milling and extracting the oil from
the kernel. The general steps in Jatropha processing are: plucking
or harvesting the fruits from tree, drying (sun), shelling or decorticating, oil extraction. The decorticating of Jatropha fruits means
breaking and complete removal of the seed coat/shell and taking
out the seed without causing damage for oil expression. The manual decorticating process is tedious, time consuming and labour
intensive and thus it indulges drudgery in the system. Moreover,

fruits partially shelled, kg

unshelled fruit, kg
percentage of broken seed and dust
decortications efciency, %
machine efciency, %
power, watt
width of the rotating blade, cm
torque applied, N m
thickness of the rotating blade, cm
equivalent torque, N m
percentage of partially shelled fruits
percentage of whole clean seed
percentage of unshelled fruits

quantity and quality of out-turn depends upon the skill of the

operation [15].
Review of literature has revealed that research has been conducted on Jatropha fruit/seed and its oil for preparation of biodiesel, and detoxication experiments with the Jatropha seed oil
[12,1619]. However, some of the researchers have worked on different types dehulling system/sheller for various edible seeds like
sunower, okra seed, maize, cocoa pod, ground nut, melon, etc.
but there is no investigation was carried out for decortications of
Jatropha fruits [2024]. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to
develop and optimise the performance parameters of a hand-operated decorticator for Jatropha fruits.
Decortications or shelling of Jatropha fruits has previously being
accomplished by seed collectors with either by brick, stone or wooden mallets or by direct removal of seeds with ones ngers. The
dried fruits are placed in a thin layer on a hard surface i.e. on a table, or on a concrete oor and a small wooden board is moved over
them. While pressing it down, the fruit shell split and the seeds
come out. This process of decortications is time consuming and labour intensive process. Also these traditional methods results in
serious injury to human ngers, coupled with low output rates
[23]. Thus the quest for a satisfactory cheap effective means of
detaching the seeds from the fruits, so replacing such traditional
shelling techniques, is of importance for small and even medium
size farms in India and other developing country. Till now there

Table 1
Physical properties of Jatropha fruit, seed and kernela.
Physical properties

Fruit

Seed

Kernel

Oil content (%)

Moisture content (%, d.b.)
Length (mm)
Width (mm)
Thickness (mm)
1000 Unit mass (g)
Seed fraction (%)
Kernel fraction (%)
Shell/Husk fraction (%)
Arithmetic mean diameter (mm)
Geometric mean diameter (mm)
Sphericity (decimal)
Surface area (mm2)
Aspect ratio (%)
Bulk density (kg/m3)
True density (kg/m3)
Porosity (%)

5
5
100
100
100
20
20
20
20
100
100
100
100
100
20
20
20

20.12 2.11
7.97 0.56
29.37 0.87
22.22 0.62
21.61 0.65
2280.35 13.26
71.68 7.35
44.73 5.36
28.32 7.35
24.39 0.51
24.15 0.25
0.82 0.02
1834.40 77.73
75.65 8.23
278 1.01
546 5.47
49.08 0.8

38.32 4.61
4.75 0.23
18.83 0.51
11.47 0.43
9.01 0.32
761.50 3.25
100
63.02 5.78
37.13 4.11
13.10 0.31
12.45 0.30
0.66 0.01
486.94 15.67
60.91 7.11
476 1.97
711 7.97
33.05 0.11

45.03 7.86
6.35 0.04
14.03 0.74
7.17 0.35
5.90 0.12
476.17 2.54
NA
100
0
9.03 0.67
8.41 1.25
0.59 0.06
221.91 12.63
51.10 5.89
588.26 3.84
865.87 9.23
32.06 2.67

n is the number of samples. Data are mean values standard deviation.

a
Source: Pradhan et al. [12,13].

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R.C. Pradhan et al. / Applied Energy 87 (2010) 762768

is no specic decorticator machine available for Jatropha fruits in

the available literatures, patents or known areas [25,26].
Considering all these benets, Jatropha production and processing must be mechanized and properly improved to aid prots and
reduce losses. Therefore, it was the objectives of this investigation,
using locally-available materials in India to design, develop and
test a simple, hand-operated Jatropha fruit decorticating machine
meant for small scale operation and peasant farmers which is eminently suitable for rural areas situated at higher altitudes and
where there is no electrical source of power is available.
2. Methodology
2.1. Description of the machine components
The Jatropha fruit decorticator was designed and developed
(Fig. 1). Its components include the frame, feed hopper, fruit decorticating chamber, concave sieve, rotating blades, discharge outlet
and a vibrating separator with sieve to separate seed and shell.
The machine was conceived as a low-cost, easy-to-adjust, easy to
dismantle and easy to fabricate device for removing the shell from
the Jatropha fruits. The conical shaped hopper is mounted on the
frame and held in place by a hopper support frame. The decorticating chamber consists of a semi-circular concave sieve having hexagonal perforations (15  25 mm) and rotating blades mounted on
shaft. Decortications of fruit may be achieved using one of several
methods: impact, rubbing, squeezing or a combination of the three.
In these three, the rubbing action would produce seed with minimal damage. To achieve minimal seed damage it is essential to apply least impact with rubbing action. The decorticating chamber
was designed in such a way that it produced more rubbing action.
The discharge outlet is the point where the seeds and shells from

the decorticating chamber are collected and move to the vibrating

separator. The separator consisted two layers of sieves having oblong opening (12  19 mm and 6  9 mm) to separate seeds and
shells. The frame is the mounting support for all the components
of the machine.
2.2. Design considerations
The mechanics of Jatropha fruit decorticator include compression, shearing and impact. The developed machine utilizes the
principle of shearing force. The following factors were considered
in the design of the Jatropha fruit decorticator.
i. Materials of adequate strength and stability were used for
fabrication (i.e. Mild steel).
ii. The machine was designed to have a maximum capacity of
40 kg of Jatropha fruit h1 so that machine could be affordable for small scale farmers, micro-industries.
iii. The materials that are available locally were used in the fabrication of the components.
Consideration was given to the cost of items and materials for
fabrication with the ultimate aim of utilizing the cheapest available materials, yet satisfying all strength requirements.
2.3. Design of machine components
The relevant physical and mechanical properties of Jatropha
fruit and seed required as basic design data were obtained
[12,17,27]. Basic considerations were given to the design for the
size/dimension and capacity of the machine, including the numbers of blades, thickness of blades and diameter of shaft. The

Fig. 1. Isomeric view of hand-operated Jatropha fruit decorticator; all dimensions are in mm.

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R.C. Pradhan et al. / Applied Energy 87 (2010) 762768

design of the hopper is based on ow characteristics of the fruit.

Pradhan et al. [12] carried out an experiment on physical properties of Jatropha fruit and they found that the ow characteristics
like sphericity varies between 0.820.83 and angle of repose varies
between 36.41 and 38.67 at various moisture content. Therefore,
the designed of the hopper angle is greater than 40 for easy owability of the fruits. Similarly, an experiment was conducted to
determine the force required to detach the seed from its fruit.
The shearing force (79N) so deduced [12] was employed in the
subsequent design and the selection of machine components like
number of blades, blade thickness, length of blade, shaft diameter,
etc. were done. The clearance between blades and concave sieve
(concave clearance) in decorticating chamber inuences the decortications efciency and seed damage. It is known that increase in
clearance would result in low decortications efciency whereas,
reduced clearance would cause seed damage. Therefore, four concave clearances (18, 21, 24, and 27 mm) were tried to determine
the optimum clearance whereas the sieve sizes were base on axial
dimensions of the fruit and seed. Eqs. (1)(6) were used to calculate some of the parameter for the various components [28].

P 2PNT

T Fr

Mc

!
2
P
l  r2
 p
2
12
l r2

MR

1
 f  t2 
6

q
2
l r2

W l
8

T e M 2 T 2 1=2

or,

Te

P
16

 d  Fs

ing blades compress the fruits against a stationary concave sieve,

there by the pliable endosperm to elastic deformation, while the
frangible shell is cracked. The cracked shell is detached from the
fruit by the repeated shearing/rubbing action of the rotating blades
against the stationary concave sieve. In the second step, the seed,
shell, unshelled or partially shelled fruits, broken seed and dust,
if any, are immediately force down through the discharge outlet
onto a vibrating separator, which separate the shell, seed, etc. at
different discharge end. The clearance gap between the rotating
blades and the cracking wall (concave sieve) are adjustable to suit
the axial dimensions of the fruit in order to ensure efcient cracking and detachment of the shell in a single pass. The components of
the design parameters and dimensioning were carried out in accordance with standard engineering practices.
2.5. Performance test procedure
Jatropha fruits sample obtained from Haryana (Bawel), India
were used for the performance test of the machine. The initial
moisture content of the fruits was determined [30,31] and was
found to be 7.97% d.b. Samples were moistened with a calculated
quantity of water [12], and conditioned to raise their moisture content to the four desired levels. This four levels of moisture content
were selected due to the fact that the moisture content of fruits
may varies according to varieties, place, season, conditioning to
fruit, etc. at the time of processing operation. The fruit parts were
carefully collected after going through the decorticating chamber
and grouped into four category, namely fruits fully shelled (whole
clean seed), N1, broken seed and dust, N2, fruits partially shelled,
N3 and unshelled fruit, N4. The following variables were taken
for experiments:
Variable

Level

Fruit moisture content, % (d.b.):

Concave clearance, mm (gap
between concave sieve and
rotating blades):
Performance indicators:

7.97, 10.53, 13.09 and 15.65

18, 21, 24 and 27

where P is the power, W; N the revolution per second; T the Torque

applied, N m; F the force required to break the fruit, N; r the width
of the rotating blade, cm; l the length of the rotating blade, cm; t the
thickness of the rotating blade, cm; f the permissible stress, kg/cm2;
Mc the moment of the couple, N m; MR the bending moment, N m; M
the maximum bending moment, N m; Te the equivalent torque,
N m; Fs the shear stress of the material, kg/cm2; d is the diameter
of the shaft, cm.
The design is done for a machine capable of decortications
capacity of 40 kg h1. From the design calculations, three numbers
of rotating blades are required to break the fruits in the decorticating chamber. The length, width and thickness of 45 cm, 23.5 cm,
and 0.2 cm respectively are required for the blades. The machine
is manually operated and the speed of rotating blade was determined to be 15 rpm. Optimum shaft diameter of 2 cm was calculated to overcome the load on shaft. The details dimension of the
machine is shown in Fig. 2. Because of the human stimulation,
the shaft used in the machine was subjected to a uctuating bending moment and hence torque. Ball bearings were used for reducing the frictional effect as indicated by the Anti-friction Bearing
manufactures Association (AFBMA) [29].
2.4. Principle of operation
The Jatropha fruits are introduced through the feed hopper and
decortications is achieved in two steps. In the rst step, the rotat-

Percentage of clean seed,

percentage of partially shelled
fruits, percentage of unshelled
fruits, decortications efciency
and machine efciency

Each of these tests was replicated three times at each moisture level. The performance was evaluated on the basis of the following
[3234]:
Percentage of whole clean seed, gs

gs

N1
 100
N0

Percentage of broken seed and dust, gb

gb

N2
 100
N0

Percentage of partially shelled fruits, gp

gp

N3
 100
N0

10

Percentage of unshelled fruits, gu

gu

N4
 100
N0

11

Decortications efciency, gde

gde


1  N3 N4
 100
N0

12

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R.C. Pradhan et al. / Applied Energy 87 (2010) 762768

Fig. 2. Front view of hand-operated Jatropha fruit decorticator; all dimensions are in mm.

Machine efciency, gme

gme



 

N3 N4
N1
100  1 

N0
N1 N2

13

where N0 = amount of fruit fed into the hopper, kg.

3. Results and discussion
3.1. Effect of moisture content and concave clearance
Table 2 shows the results of the performance test of the decorticator at different moisture content and concave clearance. The
performance parameter such as percentages of whole seed, broken
seed and dust, partially shelled fruits and unshelled fruits vary at
different moisture content and concave clearance. The percentages

of whole seed, which was calculated using Eq. (8), is maximum

(67.94 2.48%) at moisture content of 7.97% (d.b.) with a concave
clearance of 21 mm and minimum(52.18 3.09%) at moisture content of 15.65% (d.b.) with a concave clearance of 27 mm. This is due
the fact that at low moisture content the fruit become more brittle
and susceptible to mechanical damage. The percentage of broken
seed and dust, if any, was calculated using Eq. (9) and is lowest
(0.02%) at moisture content of 15.65% (d.b.) with a concave clearance of 27 mm and highest (15.09 0.87%) at initial moisture content of 7.97% (d.b.) with 18 mm concave clearance. This is due to
fact that at lower moisture content fruit is dry and due to low concave clearance with respect to its axial dimensions, the fruits get
compressed and thereby more percentage of broken and dust occur. The percentage of partially shelled fruits, which was calculated
using Eq. (10), is lowest (1.21 0.23%) at moisture content of 7.97%

Table 2
Performance of Jatropha fruit decorticator at different variables.
Concave clearance, (mm)

Percentage of whole
seed, gs

Percentage of broken
seed and dust, gb

Moisture content: 7.97% (d.b.)

18
21
24
27

57.79 1.65
67.94 2.48
59.78 1.72
56.78 2.34

15.09 0.87
2.11 1.56
1.78 0.77
0.08 1.02

1.21 0.23
4.06 0.11
4.11 0.23
9.99 0.51

0.26 0.08
2.16 0.04
3.81 0.07
13.17 0.02

Moisture content: 10.53% (d.b.)

18
21
24
27

57.11 2.31
62.04 1.45
60.87 1.78
55.65 2.01

14.89 1.05
2.07 0.86
1.62 0.81
0.05 0.27

2.76 0.32
5.33 0.09
4.41 0.22
11.13 1.01

0.89 0.06
2.38 0.1
4.55 0.05
13.72 1.12

Moisture content: 13.09% (d.b.)

18
21
24
27

56.01 1.35
61.93 2.56
58.57 1.09
53.56 1.33

12.66 1.68
1.51 0.21
1.32 0.05
1.03 0.06

5.31 0.67
8.87 0.28
9.13 0.22
12.46 0.91

1.01 0.02
3.34 0.06
4.62 0.06
13.99 0.03

Moisture content: 15.65% (d.b.)

18
21
24
27

54.71 3.01
60.18 2.12
57.66 1.6
52.18 3.09

6.23 1.0
9.64 0.06
10.13 0.2
12.61 2.11

1.86 0.01
3.37 0.04
4.73 0.11
14.11 2.32

9.12 1.2
1.22 0.07
1.10 0.02
0.02 0.001

Percentage of partially
shelled fruit, gp

Percentage of
unshelled fruit, gu

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R.C. Pradhan et al. / Applied Energy 87 (2010) 762768

shelled and unshelled fruit. This is because of optimum pressure

created at this point of concave clearance to spilt the fruits to seeds
and shells.
3.2. Decortications efciency (gde )
The decortications efciency (gde ) of the machine is calculated
by using Eq. (12). The effects of moisture content and concave
clearance on decortications efciency are shown in Fig. 3. It is observed that at any clearance between concave sieve and blades, the
decortications efciency decrease linearly from 98.53% to 73.28%
(statistically signicant at P < 0.05), when the moisture content increases from 7.97% to 15.65% d.b. The low efciency obtained at
higher moisture content was probably due to the wet fruits which
are more elastic than dry fruits, hence, they are not easily detached
during decortications. A similar decreasing trend in decortications
efciency has been reported for bambara ground nut [24] and sunower seed [22] whereas, for locust bean, the trend is increases
with moisture content as reported by Audu et al. [33] in a concentric cylinder locust bean dehuller. It is also seen from Fig. 3 that at
concave clearance of 18 mm with moisture content of 7.97% d.b.,
the machine has maximum decortications efciency as compared
to other combinations. This is due to the fact that at initial moisture content the fruit is dried, brittle and at lower concave clearance, the machine developed more shearing force and hence,
more fruit detached.

Concave clearance
18mm

Percentage
of whole
seed, gs

Percentage of
broken seed
and dust, gb

Percentage of
partially
shelled fruit, gp

Percentage
of unshelled
fruit, gu

7.97
10.53
13.09
15.65

60.57a
58.92b
57.52c
56.18d

4.77a
4.66b
3.88bc
2.87d

4.84a
5.91ab
8.94c
9.65d

4.85a
5.39b
5.74c
6.02d

90.00
85.00
80.00
75.00

Percentage
of whole
seed, gs

Percentage of
broken seed
and dust, gb

Percentage of
partially
shelled fruit, gp

Percentage
of unshelled
fruit, gu

18
21
24
27

56.41a
63.02b
59.22c
54.54d

12.94a
1.73a
1.46b
0.05c

3.88a
6.95ab
6.98b
11.55c

1.01a
2.81ab
4.43bc
13.75c

Values in the same columns followed by different superscript letters (ad) are
signicant (P < 0.05).

7.97

10.53
13.09
Moisture content,%,d.b.

15.65

Concave clearance
18mm

21mm

24mm

27mm

7.97

10.53

13.09

15.65

100.00
Machine efficiency, % %

Concave
clearance,
(mm)

27mm

Fig. 3. Effects of moisture content on decortications efciency against different

concave clearance.

Values in the same columns followed by different superscript letters (ad) are
signicant (P < 0.05).

Table 4
Effect of concave clearance on performance indicator.

24mm

95.00

70.00
5.41

Table 3
Effect of moisture content on performance indicators.
Moisture
content,
(%, d.b.)

21mm

100.00
Decortication Efficiency, % %

(d.b.) with a concave clearance of 18 mm and highest

(12.61 2.11%) at moisture content of 15.65% (d.b.) with a concave
clearance of 27 mm. Similarly, the percentage of unshelled fruit,
which was calculated using Eq. (11), is lowest (0.26 0.08%) at
moisture content of 7.97% (d.b.) with a concave clearance of
18 mm and highest (14.11 2.32) at moisture content of 7.97%
(d.b.) with a concave clearance of 27 mm.
Table 3 shows the results of applying Duncan Multiple-Range
Test (DMRT) to the mean of effect of moisture content on the performance indicators. It can be seen from Table 3 that the percentages of whole seed and broken seed with dust decrease linearly
from 60.57% to 56.18% and 4.77% to 2.87%, respectively, (P < 0.05)
with the increase in the moisture content in the range of 7.97
15.65% (d.b.). These decreasing trend may be owing to the fruit becomes more moistened which bind the seed with shell to remove/
detached easily. Similarly, the percentage of partially shelled fruit
and unshelled fruit after decortications is increase linearly
(P < 0.05) with the increase in the moisture content in the range
of 7.9715.65% (d.b.). A similar increasing trend in percentage of
partially shelled fruit and unshelled fruit has been reported for
okra seed and bambara groundnut [24,34]. This may be attributed
to the earlier report by Oluwole et al. [24] that at low moisture
content fruit become more brittle and susceptible to mechanical
damage.
Table 4 represents the results of applying DMRT to the mean of
effect of concave clearance on the performance indicators. It was
observed that concave clearance signicantly affected all the performance indicators at 5% level with different concave clearance
of 1827 mm. It was observed from the Table 4 that the percentage
of whole seed recovered after decortications is signicantly affected by different concave clearance. The highest percentage of
whole seed recovered is 63.02% at a concave clearance of 21 mm
whereas it is lowest (54.54%) at concave clearance of 27 mm. It
was also observed that the percentage of broken seed and dust decrease linearly with increase in concave clearance while the percentage of partially shelled fruits and percentage of unshelled
fruit increase with increase in concave clearance. The effects of
concave clearance represented that at optimum gap between the
stationary concave sieve and rotating blade, the machine has higher percentage of whole seed and lower percentages of partially

95.00
90.00
85.00
80.00
75.00
70.00
5.41

Moisture content,%,d.b.
Fig. 4. Effect of moisture content on efciency of machine against different concave
clearance.

768

R.C. Pradhan et al. / Applied Energy 87 (2010) 762768

3.3. Machine efciency (gme )

The efciency of the machine (gme ) was calculated by using Eq.
(13). The effect of moisture content on efciency of machine
against different concave clearance is shown in Fig. 4. It is seen that
increase in moisture content the efciency of the machine decrease
(statistically signicant at P < 0.05). At initial moisture content of
7.97% d.b. with concave clearance of 21 mm, the efciency of the
machine obtained was highest (90.96 0.74%), while at moisture
content of 15.65% d.b. with concave clearance of 27 mm, the machine efciency was lowest (73.25 0.64%) as compare to other
conditions. A similar result on efciency of machine (85100%)
has been reported by Adewumi and Fatusin [21] for cocoa pod
using a impact-type hand-operated cocoa pod breaker. The efciency of the machine decrease because at high moisture content,
the seed coats or shells were sticky resulting in a high force of friction to separate the shell from seeds. But at lower moisture content
and at a optimum concave clearance, the fruits were less sticky and
get required force to split and therefore were able to separate
much more easily.
4. Conclusions
A manually operated Jatropha fruit decorticator was designed,
constructed and tested. The results of the study show that moisture content of the fruits and concave clearance between concave sieve and rotating blades, signicantly affected the
performance indicators. The decorticator works more efciently
as the moisture content of the fruit decreases with an optimum
clearance between the concave and the blade. The decortications
efciency of the machine decreases with increase in fruit moisture content, while percentages of broken seed with dust decreased with increase in moisture content. It was found that
the best set of conditions under which the decorticator can be
operated is at fruit moisture content of 7.97% d.b. with concave
clearance of 21 mm between the concave and the blade at which
the maximum whole seeds of 67.94% can be achieved and machine efciency of 90.96% can be obtained. The decorticator does
not require electricity for its operation, hence, the problem of
the frequent power outages that characterize in India has no effect on it. Also, because of its cheap cost to manufacture from
locally-available materials, it is likely to satisfy a niche market
in India and other developing country. Its use would help subsistence farmers to get onto the rst rung of the wealth-creating
ladder.
Acknowledgements
Funding for this research was provided by the National Oilseed
and Vegetable oils Development (NOVOD) Board, Government of
India, Gurgaon, Delhi. The authors are grateful to Dr. Naresh Kaushik, Scientist, RRS, Bawal, Haryana, India for providing Jatropha
fruits for the purpose of experiments.
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