Fabrication and Testing of a Manual Charcoal-Fired Groundnut Fryer

Groundnut is an agricultural product that is of great value to both man and animals. It serves as raw material for industries. Frying is the process of generating characteristic aroma, flavour and colour required by consumers for acceptance of such fried food. The wide range usage of groundnut and its products has led to increase in its demand. However, the local methods of roasting Groundnut seeds after it has been shelled has some associated problems and difficulties which make it ineffective, laborious and time consuming. A manually operated Groundnut seed roaster was constructed with the aim of improving on the traditional methods commonly used in the Nigeria. The machine shows the roasting efficiency (Er) to be in the realm of 98.0% with percentages of seed damaged (loss) in the range of 2.00-20.0%. The average and optimum time for roasting was estimated to be in the range of 4 minutes. Keywords: Groundnut, charcoal, groundnut fryer, mechanization, heat DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/9-1-0