Journal of Agricultural Engineering
  • Year: 2017
  • Volume: 54
  • Issue: 3

Design and Development of Manually Operated Sapota Cleaner

  • Author:
  • M.N. Dabhi1,, P.R. Davara2
  • Total Page Count: 8
  • Page Number: 40 to 47

1Research Engineer, Department of Processing and Food Engineering, College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Junagadh Agricultural University. Junagadh-362001, Gujarat

2Assistant Research Engineer, All India Coordinated Research Project on Post Harvest Engineering and Technology, Department of Processing and Food Engineering, College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Junagadh Agricultural University. Junagadh-362001, Gujarat

*Corresponding author email address: mndabhi@jau.in

Online published on 29 March, 2018.

Abstract

Cleaning of sapota is an important unit operation after harvesting. Harvested fruits are presently cleaned by manually rubbing with cloth. A manually operated sapota cleaner was designed and developed to reduce human drudgery. The cleaner was tested at 60, 65 and 70 rpm, and its batch capacity varied from 15 to 45 kg. The drum with jute cloth inner lining had cleaning efficiency of 99.95% at 70 rpm rotational speed and 20 kg sapota batch load. At drum speed of 60 rpm and 20 or 30 kg of sapota load, no damage o fruit was observed. The cleaner gave best performance at 70 rpm drum speed, 20 kg feed/batch, giving 99.95% cleaning efficiency and 2.04% fruit damage. The cost of the cleaner was 7000, with cost saving of 0.30/kg sapota as compared to traditional cleaning method.

Cleaning of sapota is an important unit operation to be carried out after harvesting.

Keywords

Sapota, cleaner, efficiency, damage