Development and testing of apricot (Prunus armeniaca. L) pit decorticator

Apricot (Prunus armeniaca. L) is an important stone fruit grown abundantly in the temperate climate. Traditionally, the fruit stone (pit), leftover part of fruit after utilizing apricot flesh, contains the apricot kernel. These kernels are currently being explored for the oil extraction purpose. Therefore. postharvest management and processing of the apricot pit are imperative along with its process mechanization. Manual decortication of apricot pit is tedious and laborious task. Hence, a small-scale apricot pit decorticator machine was developed to mitigate all these issues. The machine works on the principle of breaking the pit by impact and compression forces produced by reciprocating piston. Performance of the decorticator was evaluated using dry wild apricot pits. The independent variables, namely, crankshaft speed (60-100 rpm), moisture content (8.5-16.5% wb), feed per stroke (10-18 g/stroke), and impact clearance (0-2 mm) were selected for testing of the decorticator. Decortication efficiency and broken kernel percentage were obtained in the range of 67.25-77.49% and 8.97-30.17%, respectively. The best performance of the decorticator for maximum decortication efficiency with minimum percentage of broken kernels were found to be at 85 rpm crankshaft speed, 15% (wb) moisture content, 18 g/stroke feed per stroke, and 0.8 mm impact clearance. Pay-back period of the decorticator was found to be 0.48 years.