Abstract:
Pineapple is one of the major fruit produced in India. The major problem related with the
processing of pineapple is peeling. Peeling of pineapple manually is a time consuming, labour
intensive process and causes drudgery, Therefore a simple, semi mechanical pineapple peeling
machine which is easy to operate, maintain, and economical was fabricated. The peeler removes
the peel effectively and makes the further processing easy. The equipment consist of mainly
three parts two motors, cutting blade and diameter adjustment system. One motor of 300 rpm
and12v which control the movement of blade and another of 500 rpm and 12v used to rotate
pineapple. The wedge shaped cutting blade made from stainless steel square pipe having 0.1mm
thickness, 4mm length and 2mm width. The blade is attached to diameter adjustment system
which facilitates the movement of blade according to shape of pineapple. The simultaneous
movement of two motors helps in rotation of pineapple and upward and downward movement of
blade, respectively.This results in peeling of pineapple. The designed pineapple peeler also
proved to have a high efficiency (99.3%) with less material loss (1.69%) and capacity about
305.5kg/hr.
