Chironji nut decorticator developed by IGKV, Raipur, India

The kernel contains the nuts of chironji. Traditionally, it was removed by hand hammer, small stone or some locally available stone chakki (Jatta). These methods are very tedious, laborious and uneconomical to the farmers and result in lowquality products with higher broken kernels. To overcome this problem in processing of nut, IGKV, Raipur, design and developed a chironji nut decorticator, to remove outer shell from the nuts to get whole kernels. The machine comprises of feedhopper, cylindrical housing, decortications unit, main frame, electric motor, grader, sieve etc. Results showed that the efficiency of machine was found to be 93.90 % and capacity was 32.82 kg/h. The whole kernels and broken percentage was obtainedat 16% and 2%, respectively. The machine is most useful to the small farmers, small entrepreneurs, self help group, tribal group etc. who are involved in decortications of chironji nut. In this method the cost of operation and time required todecorticate is very less as compared to traditional method.