Developing a coconut de-shelling mechanism for improved safety and productivity in virgin coconut oil production

Abstract

Virgin coconut oil manufacturing is one of the major products for both export and local markets in Sri Lanka. Most of the large and small-scale manufacturers encounter many issues in the process of de-shelling in terms of both safety and productivity. On average at least 5 accidents are reported to have occurred in the industry per month. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to introduce an improved de-shelling mechanism that helps coconut oil manufacturers to increase their operator safety and productivity. The safety and performance parameters of the de-shelling operation were established using a review of the literature. Then the existing coconut de-shelling operation was analyzed for its safety and productivity using an industrial case study. Basic concepts were generated and evaluated to develop a final design using the fundamental machine design principles. The developed concepts were tested by benchmarking against the safety and productivity Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) using 3D modelling, and experiments. The proposed solution offers promising results to address the safety and productivity issues. However, there is room for further improvements in bringing the design up to the commercial.