Development of Corn Mill for Village-Level of Operation
Keywords:
Corn mill, Zea mays, dry-milling, postharvestAbstract
This research has successfully developed and field-tested an innovative corn mill with milling capacity of 260 kgh-1. Majority of the available village-type corn mills in the Philippines have failed to meet the minimum ‘product recovery’ and ‘degerminator efficiency’ of 64% and 80%, respectively, as set by the Philippine Agricultural Engineering Standard (PAES). This resulted to the production of poor quality corn grits with high postharvest losses.  The poor quality of corn grits discourages consumers who used to eat corn as their staple food. Facing these challenges, this research aimed to improve the design of village-type corn mill to satisfy the quality standard of PAES for corn mill. Performance tests results revealed that the developed technology is technically and financially viable. It has an output capacity of 240 kgh-1, product recovery of 64.2-72.3% and degerminator efficiency of 81.2-91.5%. It is capable of producing good quality corn grits. Estimated operating cost per kg output of the developed corn mill technology is Php1.09 (US$1=Php48). The estimated financial internal rate of return of investing in the technology is 84.7%. Given its technical and financial viability, the newly-developed technology provides opportunities in ensuring the availability and accessibility of affordable good quality corn grits. This can lead to wider and sustainable consumption of corn grits as staple food in the country.
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