DEVELOPMENT OF A SINKING FISH FEED PELLETIZING MACHINE

To meet the need of the world's increasing population in term of protein requirements, animals need to be fed with meals that would aid their growth and development.These feeds are processed using simple techniques such as hot or cold pelletizing, size reduction, crushing, rolling, roasting etc. Fish is an important source of both food and income to many people in developing countries and its supply could be made available in the local markets when production of fish feed is on the increase.A sinking fish feed pelletizing machine was designed and produced for both small and medium farms.The pelletizer uses a screw auger (shaft) for propelling the feed mix through the die.The screw auger is enclosed in the barrel and is propelled by a 4 Hp electric motor with the aid of V-belt and pulleys.The auger is fed through the hopper, which is able to hold a large quantity of feed mix at a time.The feed mix comes out from the die as pellets.The evaluation was carried out with a prepared fish feed mixed with water having a final weight of 0.3 kg and different sizes of die (3.5 mm, 4.5 mm, 5 mm and 6 mm) were used to pellet equal weight of the fish feed.The results showed that the smaller the hole of the die the more time required to pelletize the fish feed.The machine capacities were found to be 60 kg/h and 17.65 kg/h for 6.6 mm and 3.5 mm die-size respectively.The developed sinking fish feed pelletizing machine performed optimally as it took the sun-dried pellets approximately less than five minutes before sinking in water.