Use of the rolling mill in the extraction of maguey’s juice

Author: H. M. Duran-Garcia ^1*, E. J. Gonzalez-Galvan ¹ and Pastor Ortiz Matadamas ²

Received 20 January 2007, accepted 12 April 2007.

Abstract

The extraction of maguey’s juice is carried out in a mill that consists of a heavy stone-wheel that rotates impelled by a horizontal axis. The motion of the system is generated by a vertical axis in the center of the mill, which is driven by an internal combustion engine, an electric motor and/or work animals. Once extracted from the oven, the heads of maguey are deposited inside of the mill’s workspace, where they are cut with an axe in order to facilitate crushing by the stone wheel. The objective of this work consisted of carrying out an analysis of the effect of the rolling element on the efficiency of extraction of the juice by means of the destruction of the maguey pineapples and to determine the best option out of seven analyzed mills. A study of the principle of operation of the system was made with the purpose of improving or optimizing its technical characteristics. It was determined that the rolling wheel uses the combined principles of pressing, rubbing, smashing, crashing and cutting; achieving the objective of breaking, milling, cutting, whetting, sharpening, bending, breaking and crushing the cells of the maguey pineapples. The efficiency in the extraction of juice was increased with a low volume of sludge.

Key words: Maguey mill, size reduction, extraction of juice, pineapples.