Optimized Design and Development of a Coconut Meat Extraction Mechanism after Weighing the Cost and Benefit to the Environment

^1,2 SET, CRISD, University of Technology Sarawak (UTS), 1, Jalan University, 96000 Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia
³ Swinburne University of Technology, Jalan Simpang Tiga, 93350 Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
⁴ National Institute of Technology, Tomakomai College, Japan, 443 Nishikioka, Tomakomai, Hokkaido 059-1275, Japan

^* Prashobh Karunakaran: prashobh.karunakaran@gmail.com

Abstract

The aim of this research was to enable easier access to the food value of coconut for humanity. There was a span of time from the 1950s-1990s where much media coverage discouraged the consumption of coconut, even though it was used in the West since the 16th century. This started due to the supply cut off during WW2, thereby Western researchers had to enable humans to consume corn and soybean oil which had become an established industry by the end of WW2. Therefore, propaganda was used to defame coconut oil. The main argument was that coconut oil has a high percentage of saturated fats, neglecting the fact that a huge sample of humans in Asia have been consuming it for millenniums. Later Western researchers realized that the balance between LDL and HDL is more important and coconut has a good balance. This caused a resurgence in consumption. The biggest problem with coconut is accessing the coconut meat through the hard husk and shell. Therefore, two setups were designed and developed in this work. The first setup enables cutting the coconut fast with utmost safety and environmental benefit and the second setup enables grinding out the coconut meat.