Design, Development and Performance Evaluation of Five Cylinder Power Operated Sugarcane Crusher

A compact 5-cylinder power-operated sugarcane crusher was designed, fabricated and evaluated for performance across six commercially important sugarcane varieties (CO419, CO62175, CO7804, B37172, CO8371 and CO86032) cultivated in Karnataka, India. The physical and physico-chemical properties of the selected varieties were characterised prior to crushing trials. Machine performance was assessed at three driving pulley speeds (10, 15 and 20 rpm) and benchmarked against four conventional crusher types. At 20 rpm, the 5-cylinder crusher achieved a cane-crushing capacity of 113–120 kg/hr, juice extraction efficiency of 65–70%, and power consumption of only 300 Watts. Across all six varieties, mean juice extraction efficiencies ranged from 68.06% (CO419) to 75.06% (CO62175), representing improvements of 5.30–14.64 percentage points over a comparable 3-cylinder gearbox-type crusher. Juice quality parameters including Brix, sucrose, reducing sugar and purity were also determined. The results demonstrate that the 5-cylinder configuration delivers superior extraction efficiency with reduced energy consumption relative to existing crusher designs, offering a commercially viable solution for small and medium sugarcane processing units.