CONSTRUCTION AND EVALUATION OF A LOW COST FRUIT PULPER

Uganda’s fast growing food processing industry has enabled more entrepreneurs to venture into the fruits processing sector. To improve their scale and quality of production, it is necessary be for these entrepreneurs to availed an efficient, low cost and easy-to-use equipment that can pulp large amounts of fruit in a short period of time. In addition, locally manufactured equipment are easier to maintain and can be tailored to meet the entrepreneurs’ needs. The purpose of this research was to construct and evaluate a low cost fruit pulper which would address the demands of such entrepreneurs. The main components of the pulper included the drive unit, hopper, sieve, brushes, shaft, stands and the power unit. The components of the fruit pulper were sized and constructed basing on the desired capacity of 5 kg of fruit per minute. The fruit pulper was tested with pineapples, tomatoes and mangoes. The mean juice yield for every 5 kg of pineapples, tomatoes and mangoes were 3.88±0.09, 3.77±0.23 and 3.07±0.12 kg respectively.