Development of an efficient rice De-stoner

One of the major staple foods consumed in Africa is rice. It has been discovered that it contained stones during the cause of processing which necessitate for rice destoner. This research was carried out to develop an efficient rice de-stoning machine. Therefore, among the work found in the literature, the two most efficient de-stoners were compared to others named Model A and B while the developed model was named KASO model. The components of the developed machine include feed hopper that houses the rice at the first stage of processing, two sieves of diameter 11.7 mm and 3 mm for wider separation, electric motor for torque transmission, and electric blower for separation of small particles. Stainless steel was selected for the interior due to its high corrosion resistance while mild steel was used for the exterior because of its high strength. The throughput and efficiency were measured and compared to the existing design. The results show that the KASO model yielded an efficiency and throughput of [91.4%, 46.57 kg⁄hr] compared to [98.3%, 11.46 kg⁄hr] and [82.47%, 47.39 kg⁄hr] for Model A and B, respectively.