Citrus juice extractor having means for separating juice pulp and rag

Abstract

Improvements in a fruit processing juice extractor in which fruit is fed by a feed wheel to conveyors having elastomer cups for holding the fruits and moving them against a stationary cutting knife to provide severed sections which are transported to rotary reamers that remove the juice and juice-bearing material from the peel sections which are subsequently ejected by ejector wheels into a peel chute for delivery to a bar grid in the chute for diverting the peel sections directly to an outlet, or to a separator for separating the juice, pulp and rag from the peel. A hopper-shaped collector is arranged to conduct extracted juice, rag and pulp together with undesirable contaminants such as peel that may not have been properly ejected in the juice extraction cycle, fruit that may have been dropped at the feed wheel or during transfer to the cups of the conveyors or which may have broken loose during the reaming cycle, to a roller grid structure arranged to separate and positively deliver the undesired contaminants to an outlet which may be the same as the outlet for the peel sections, while permitting the juice, rag and pulp to pass between the grid rollers into an outlet path containing a helical screw conveyor which will positively propel the juice, rag and pulp to the outlet under adverse conditions, and particularly a freeze condition which may occur when the liquid content of the fruit is reduced by more than one-half.