Design, Fabrication and Performance Evaluation of a Rotary Drum Abrasion, Continuous Type Peeling Machine for Solanum Tuberosum (Potato)

Abstract

Peeling and washing of potato tubers are the basic unit operations required to perform at the beginning of potato processing into any form of processed product. Most of the currently available peelers are batch type and it was reluctant to fulfil the user’s needs. Therefore, a rotary abrasion peeling cum washing, continuous type peeler was designed and fabricated to meet Sri Lankan medium and large-scale food processors requirements. The machine was composed of integration of abrasion drum and fibre brushes. The undulated surfaces of potatoes were peeled by fibre brushes while the abrasion drum lead to peel the rest of them and the drum was being rotated. A water spraying unit was fixed inside the drum to facilitate efficient peeling and cleaning when potatoes were being peeled. The capacity of the machine was 100 kgh-1 with the peeling efficiency of 87.57%, percentage mass loss of 3.58% and damage percentage of 4.24%, respectively. The optimum horizontal drum angle and rotating speed were 10° and 75 rpm. The performance of the newly fabricated machine was compared with the commonly practiced manual peeling with knife. The result revealed that peeling capacity 15 times higher than the manual method in comparison to the manual method while 14-fold decrease in the cost of operation and 15-fold decrease in labour requirement for the new peeler. Moreover, the break-even point value was recorded to be 608 kgyr-1. Therefore, it can be concluded that the newly fabricated potato peeler is appropriate for medium and large-scale food processors in Sri Lanka.