Peanut oil press redesign for Developing countries

One of the causes of malnutrition among the rural inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa is the high cost of dietary fats that are necessary to maintain normal body functions. Though the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN recommends an annual intake of 9.6 liters of dietary fats a year per person, some areas of Africa consume only about 1.5 liters annually. Many members of these communities lack the resources to purchase imported edible oils; locally produced peanut oil would provide a cheaper alternative. In addition, peanut production is particularly beneficial to farmers, as peanut plants enrich the soil they grow in. Once they have a steady supply of peanuts, the problem facing farmers is the inability to efficiently extract the oil from the nuts. The current design for human-powered rapid extraction is the Bielenberg ram press, which uses a lever to generate the required pressure needed to extract the oil. However, this design is not optimal for two reasons: it requires significant upper body strength to operate, and also, incorrect operation of the lever leads to only a fraction of the peanuts' oil content being extracted. For these reasons, this thesis focuses on a design modification originally proposed by a team in D-Lab Spring 2006.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Lee, Daipan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Amy Smith.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40491

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40491