Fabrication and Evaluation of Screw-like Fish Pelletizer

Abstract

Good and balanced meals are required for fish to stay healthy and the production of these meals requires some machines like pelletizer. This study therefore contributes to the improvement of existing models of this machine by designing, fabricating and evaluating the performance of a new pelletizer. After fabrication, 5 kg fish feed ingredients weight was processed for 2.5 minutes in the machine in quadruplicate. The average discharge efficiency, percentage loss due to residue ingredients and production rate for the machine are 92.25 %, 7.75 % and 110.7 kg/h, respectively. The results showed that an increase in drying days led to a corresponding increase in percentage moisture content removal with a similar reduction in the weight of the pelletized fish meal. This machine will be of great assistant to medium and small-scale aquaculture farmers, thereby reducing the need for foreign sources of fish feed in fish farming sector.</jats:p>