Performance evaluation of modified rotary banana slicer

Abstract

Banana chips as snack food is very popular in Kerala because of its traditional and ethnic importance. Traditional methods of banana chips making involves four major units operations namely peeling of fruits, cutting of fruits into slices, frying and packaging. Each of these unit operations are done manually especially due to the lack of appropriate mechanical system.Slicing is carried out to reduce the size of the product to suit processing and consumer requirements. However, this operation is very difficult and time consuming.Hence there is a need to develop a new model of banana slicer which can compete with manual slicing both in speed and quality. The new slicer can be efficiently used in both small and large scale industries for slicing bananas with minimum loss of material (3.4%) and quality. It is suitable for all size and shape of banana and thickness of slice is adjustable according to the need of the consumer. The thickness of banana slices decreased from 1.15 mm to 0.85 mm as the speed increased from 100 to 800 rpm. However the average thickness of 1 mm was maintained between 300 to 600 rpm. It is a user- friendly machine capable of slicing banana at desired thickness directly into the frying pan. The variable speed motor drive helps to alter the capacity of the slicer as per the requirement. The lateral movement of the slicer unit is possible to and from over the frying pan adding convenience in operation. Continuous feeding is possible through stainless steel chutes which has spring loaded curved holding plates to hold the peeled banana straightly.This mechanism ensures the slicing of the last segment of peeled banana, which otherwise will be wasted in other commercial models and manual method. Thus the mechanical damage could reduce from 13.6 % in commercial slicers to 3.4% in the present model. An oil coated flexible brush always clean the cutting edge by wiping away the banana sap released through the cut surface. The new slicer could be efficiently used in both small and large scale industries for slicing bananas with enhanced capacity of 100 kg/hr and with a slicing efficiency of 95.86%. The machine is overcoming almost all the technical problems in slicing operation, hence it can be easily used or modified for slicing other kind of vegetables used for chips making and other food industries.