The Melon Seed Dehuller

The Melon Seed Dehuller

The melon seed dehuller is a machine designed to shell and separate the seeds from the cotyledon.melon seed dehuller It is suitable for use with watermelon and other species of melon, and it has many advantages over the traditional manual process. These include: low energy consumption, small space occupation, easy operation and maintenance, low loss of the kernels, and high shelling efficiency.

The conventional method of separating the seeds from the pods of a melon involves breaking and cutting the fruits with clubs or a sharp object (cutlass).melon seed dehuller This is time consuming, stressful, and results in great losses of the fruit’s mesocarp and endocarp. The drudgery involved in this manual depodding process limits and discourages large scale production of the crop [1].

A number of researchers have tried to reduce the stress and drudgery associated with the depodding of melon by designing and building motorized and manual melon shellers using impact force. However, the effectiveness of these machines has been limited by poor design and engineering properties of melon seeds, fruits, and pods [2].

This study aimed at designing and constructing a simple and effective melon shelling machine that utilizes friction rather than impact force for shelling the melon seeds. The machine was fabricated from locally sourced components and assembled through machining and joining processes. It consists of four units; Hopper, Shelling Unit, Discharge Unit and Power Source Unit.

In the hopper unit, the melon seeds are fed consistently through a centralized hole into the shelling chamber where they move between a rotating inner vanned drum and a fixed cylindrical ring that encloses the drum. The seeds are subjected to a continuous collision with the rough body of the drum (lined with rod weldments) which causes them to crack and separate from their shells as they continue to move down the outlet point.

The hopper and the shelling unit are fabricated from mild steel metal sheet with an allowance of 10mm given on all edges to cater for hemming. The hopper was marked out with the aid of set square, steel rule and scriber and then cut out with a shearing machine, chisel and hammer. The sheet was then folded and welded using the manual arc welding machine. The hopper was designed with two openings; one larger at the top for introducing the melon seeds into the Sheller and the other smaller opening at the lower part to connect it with the shelling chamber. The hopper was connected to the shelling chamber with a centralized hole that is slanting toward the smaller opening.

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