Abstract:
In Ethiopia, an estimated 5.89 million beehives out of which farmers keep about 5.66 million
beekeepers use traditional hives. Honeycombs from these hives and colonies are normally
harvested and extracted using traditional methods. This method leads to contamination of honey
and incomplete extraction with impurities in the extract. Moreover time-consuming and
tiresome, which implies that more valuable time is spent on extracting honey. Honey producers
living in different rural areas have no idea of the quality of honey they produce. A screw press
honeycomb extractor is a good alternative to the existing methods of honeycomb extraction for
both traditional and modern hives. However, this method left some honey on the base of the
pressing chamber limiting honey extraction efficiency. This may be due to honey smearing or
hanging on the components making up the pressing chamber. This paper aims to design
optimization and performance evaluation of manual screw press crude honey extractor to
improve extraction efficiency. Therefore, this study is to address the problem of screw press
honeycomb extraction focusing on the design of the pressing chamber, and the base of the
pressing chamber for optimum shape and size. Freshly harvested 27 kg crude honey was
obtained from honey producers residing in the East Wollega zone Gudeyabila district and
divided into two portions. The first portion was given to a local honey processor who used the
traditional method of honey extraction which involves the Debela shash and sieve method to
extract the honey. The second portion of the freshly harvested honeycomb is used for the
performance evaluation of the designed screw press. The average extraction capacity for the
screw press honey extractor method was 38.24Kghr−¿¿
. This is significantly higher (p<0.05) than
the extraction capacity calculated for the sieve and debela shash method which was 10.72
Kghr−¿¿
and 0.54 Kghr−¿¿
of honey respectively. The extraction efficiency which indicates
equipment performance was 81.10 % for the designed Screw press honey extractor, 78.66 % for
the sieve method, and 76.44 % for Debela shash method. The honey extracted using the designed
screw press is more desirable compared with the honey extracted using the traditional method.
