DEVELOPMENT OF A DECORTICATOR FOR NUTMEG (Myristica fragrans Houtt.)
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Date
40865
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Publisher
University of Agricultural Sciences GKVK, Bangalore
Abstract
Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans Houtt.) has been used as natural
food flavouring in baked goods, syrups, beverages, savory dishes and
sweets. The essential oil obtained from nutmeg is used heavily in the
cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. Nutmeg and Mace are two
different parts of same fruit of the nutmeg tree - Myristica fragrans
Houtt. The fruits are pendulous, broadly pyriform, yellow, smooth, 7-
10cm long, fleshy splitting open into two halves when ripe, showing
the ovoid 2-3cm long dark brown shining seed with hard seed coat,
surrounded by a glaciate red aril attached to the base of the seed. The
process of decortication of nutmegs to separate kernels is done
manually using a hammer or mechanically a cracking device. The
traditional decortication process is time and labour consuming. To
address this power operated nutmeg decorticator was developed and
its performance was evaluated. The developed nutmeg decorticator
consisted of a cylinder and a concave. The cylinder was made up of
mild steel angle flats of size 24.8×1.9cm and a rubber of thickness
0.5cm was fixed on to these flats to establish impact to the nuts.
While the concave was fabricated using 6 mm size M.S. rods. The
length of concave was 25cm with slotted opening size of 7.7×1cm. The
developed decorticator had the decortication efficiency, total recovery,
breakage and capacity of 98.11, 63.92, 3.08 per cent and 56.59 kg/h,
respectively, at a cylinder speed 450 rpm. The cost of decorticating
1kg of raw nutmegs at 12% moisture content was ₹ 0.79, only. The
cost benefit ratio of the developed decorticator was 1:1.19.