Development and performance evaluation of a household manually operated citrus

A manually operated citrus juice extractor for home use was designed, fabricated and its performance evaluation was conducted on three different citrus species which are Orange fruit, Lemon fruit and Lime fruit for both peeled and unpeeled samples. Three different performance parameters were used for evaluating this prototype; they are Juice yield (%), Extraction efficiency (%) and Extraction losses (%). The performance evaluation results obtained from the experiment for the three samples (Orange, Lemon, and Lime) for both peeled and unpeeled show that Maximum juice yields for peeled and unpeeled orange, lemons and limes were obtained to be 54.5 and 55.9%, 53.4 and 59.5%, 61.5 and 66.3% respectively. While maximum extraction efficiency for peeled as well as for unpeeled oranges was obtained to be 59.2% and 69.5% respectively, highest extraction efficiency for peeled and unpeeled lemon was obtained to be 57.5 and 66.1% respectively, highest extraction efficiency for peeled and unpeeled lime was obtained to be 55.3 and 61.7% respectively. Extraction losses for peeled and unpeeled oranges were obtained to be 10.9 and 1.73% respectively, the extraction losses for peeled and unpeeled lemon was obtained to be 9.7 and 3.8% respectively, the extraction losses for peeled and unpeeled lime was obtained to be 8.8 and 4.2% respectively. Hence, unpeeled fruits showed higher juice yields for all fruits, higher extraction efficiency for all fruits and lower extraction losses for all fruits.