Performance Evaluation of the Cowpea Wet De-Hulling Machine

Abstract

The performance evaluation of the cowpea de-hulling machine was done using a factorial experiment in a completely randomize design involving speed, soaking time and cowpea variety each at 3, 3, and 2 levels respectively. These were replicated three times. LSD was used to further analyze the significant means. The results showed that the speed, soaking time and cowpea variety had significant effect on de-hulling efficiency and output capacity for the developed de-huller while only soaking time and speed had significant effect on mechanical damage. The developed de-huller performs the best at 120 rpm speed, 11 mins soaking time, and with Dan-barere variety. Based on these variables, the performance indices obtained were 90.75%, 74.27 kg/hr. and 0.39% for de-hulling efficiency, output capacity and mechanical damage respectively.