DEVELOPMENT OF COCONUT HUSK FIBRE SEPARATOR

Abstract

Coir fibre and cocopeat can be extracted from coconut husk using either traditional or mechanical method. The traditional production of fibres and cocopeat from the husks is a laborious and time-consuming process that requires 10-12 months of anaerobic (bacterial) fermentation. However, mechanical processing using either defibering or decorticating equipment can be used to process the husks after only five days of immersion in water tanks. In this work, a coconut husk fibre separator was fabricated and tested. The coconut husk machine consists of the following units; electric motor, defibering chamber, outlet, pulley, belt, bearing, beaters, shaft, frame, hopper and the stands. The machine is powered by three phase electric motor of 2.5 kW running at a speed of 1260 rpm through a pulley which is keyed directly to the motor shaft. The coconut husk was soaked for 5 days and fed into the machine through the hopper and separated in the defibering chamber by means of the beating blades. The result of the test shows that the defibering efficiency is 82% while the machine capacity is 82.68 kg/hr. The machine can be used to process wet coconut husk for easy separation of quality coconut fibre and cocopeat