Development and Performance Evaluation of a Sugarcane Juice Extractor

In Nigeria several attempts have been made in the development of sugarcane juice extractor in order to solve sugarcane juice extraction problems. The extraction of sugarcane juice provide room for transporting macerated cane stalks in the field to the sugar processing industry for use with the aim of reducing the numbers of trips and bulk load involved in transporting harvested cane stalks to the processing industry for direct processing. A sugarcane juice extractor equipped with slider crank component and serrated spikes tooth on a revolving cylinder as grating unit was developed for effective maceration and extraction of sugarcane juice. The performance evaluation of the slider crank based sugarcane juice extractor was undertaken using five grating speeds: 602, 765, 791, 1176 and 1520 rpm, to determine the machine's grating capacity, grating efficiency, extraction capacity, extraction efficiency, juice yield, fibre content, moisture content of the macerated cane stalk after juice extraction, machine losses and brix value. Average values of measured parameters obtained from the five grating speeds were also used in plotting graphs. A number of predictive equations were developed.