Development and Evaluation of Egg Processing Machine for Poached Eggs Production

This study was carried out to develop and evaluate an egg processing machine for poached eggs. The parts of the machine include the hopper, conveyor screw, the main housing, shell outlet, liquid egg outlet, motor, belt, pulley and cooking section. Materials for construction of the machine were carefully selected by balancing availability, durability, resistance to corrosion, suitability for food contact application with cost. The machine was evaluated in terms of throughput and material capacities and the values obtained were 301.14 kg/h and 548.4 kg/h respectively. Proximate compositions of the raw and poached eggs were 0.655%, 10.751%, 6.722% and 0.569%, 9.849%, 6.344% for ash, protein and fat contents respectively. It can be deduced that there was no reduction in the quality of the poached eggs as compared to the raw eggs.