Development and Evaluation of Potato Slicer

Abstract

Potato is one of the commercially important vegetables in India which is exploited in value added form such as canned potato, potato chips, french fries etc. The main unit operation during the value addition process is slicing. A prototype model of potato slicer was developed to make the process easy and less time consuming. The developed potato slicer consists of a feeding unit, a slicing mechanism and a driving mechanism. The potatoes, fed manually in to the hopper, fall by gravity into the cylinder at the bottom dead centre of the piston. They are pushed horizontally to the stationary blades as the piston moves towards the top dead centre and thus sliced. The wooden bush on the piston helps in pushing all the slices out of blade assembly. The machine can be used to slice potatoes with minimum percent damage (about 4.02%). The slicing efficiency of the machine is 95.93%. The average throughput capacity of the machine at crank shaft handle speed of 24 rpm was found to be 121.42 kg/hr. The developed slicer could produce slices and capacity six times higher than manually slicing.