The aims of this research is to develop and evaluate a seed extraction machine for cucumber fruit. The developed cucumber-seed extractor consists of frame, feeding mechanism, fruit edge-cutting knives, seed-extraction mechanism, pressing mechanism, and two-wings ejector. The results at optimum conditions were: feeder speed of 18 rpm, cutting length of fruit edge of 5 mm, oriented plate angle of 55 degree and plunger speed of o.17 m/s, the machine fruit and seed productivies were 618 and 19.1 kg/h respectively. It also indicates that extraction efficiency was 86%. The specific energy was 0.0025 kW.h/ton. The operation cost of seed extractor was 620.4 L.E/ton. |
