Design and Development of a Sorghum Winnowing Machine

Abstract

The process of winnowing grains such as SORGHUM has been widely done manually in a lot of developing countries, such as Nigeria and this comes with a lot of stress and reduced output/productivity hence the need to develop a machine that will ease such burdens so that there is a better productivity and a reduced human effort in the winnowing process. As such, an electric-powered sorghum winnowing machine was designed and fabricated with locally sourced materials to ensure ease of maintenance and at no compromise to its efficiency and reliability. The machine component parts include the blower, hopper, feed gate, lever, and the machine frame. Sorghum sample was tested with the machine for operational effectiveness and the result shows that the machine has a winnowing capacity of 530kg/hr and a winnowing efficiency of 96%. The fabricated winnowing machine performed well with high winnowing efficiency, reliability, and durability with an estimated cost of $450. It was also discovered that the cost of winnowing 1kg sorghum is highly encouraging. The study was carried out in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. A performance evaluation was carried out on the machine and a cleaning efficiency of 96% was achieved.