1995 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 85-93
The study on pre-shelling treatment and sizing of cashew nut gave results for a pre-shelling treatment condition of 30min boiling time and 24h drying time as optimum and for an effective sizing method, based on thickness and width parameters, with an average whole-kernel recovery of 82.7% for the sized nuts. Performance testing of six manually operated shellers gave results indicating that the Model AE (KKU) 2 Sheller was the most promising sheller with shelling rate of 0.871kg/h, shelling efficiency of 99.0% and whole-kernel recovery of 79.3%, whereas testing of the semi-automatic Model AE (KKU) SA1 Sheller indicated a compromising optimum nut conveying rate of 40nut/min, correponding to a shelling rate of 3.14kg/h, shelling efficiency of 75.0% and whole-kernel recovery of 80.0%. Economic evaluation of the six manually operated shellers indicated that the Model AE (KKU) 2 Sheller was the most economically attractive sheller, giving the lowest break-even amount and pay back period and the highest net profit of over 1, 000B/yr for amount of nuts thelled 100kg/yr, whereas the semi-automatic sheller was considered attractive only when large amounts of nuts were shelled, giving a net profit, for one specific example, of approximately 17, 000B/yr for amount of nuts shelled 5tons/yr.
