DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A SOYA BEAN ROASTER

The current traditional methods of roasting used by soya bean processors in Uganda have crippled their scale of production due to the fact that these methods are time consuming, energy wasting and yield uneven roasted beans hence encouraging low quantity and quality of the roasted beans. The available imported soya bean roasters are expensive to purchase and costly to repair hence can’t be affordable by small and medium scale entrepreneurs. To overcome these challenges, a soya bean roaster was conceptualized, designed, fabricated and tested under various loads ranging from 20 kg-60 kg with increments of 10 kg. The roasting time and temperature, rate were monitored, data collected and analyzed. The roasting time ranged from 24 – 52 minutes while roasting temperature ranged from 31- 238 C. The average roasting rate was 69.24 kg/hr. The sensory evaluation carried out on the roasted beans gave a score of 7.4 as the overall acceptability of the grains. It is expected that this machine would meet the needs of small and medium scale enterprises in a developing country like Uganda.