Development and Performance Evaluation of Power Operated Plantain Peeler

Abstract

Banana cultivation is one of the most popular agricultural practices in India. It is a rich source of magnesium, vitamin C, dietary fiber, riboflavin, niacin, iron etc. Many varieties of banana like robusta, dwarf Cavendish, poovan, nendran etc are cultivated in India. The green banana which becomes palatable after cooking is popularly referred as plantains. They are usually processed into chips. Among the banana varieties, nendran variety is mostly preferred for making chips. At present, peeling of plantain is done manually and no means of mechanical peeling device has been commercialized till now. The conventional method of peeling is done by using stainless steel knives. This poses danger to operator’s finger by inflicting injury and also does not produce chips of uniform size. Prior to the fabrication of the peeler, important physical and mechanical properties of plantain were studied. Matured plantains, having a moisture content of 80±2 percent were graded according to their size for the determination of engineering properties. The peel and pulp were weighed to determine the pulp to peel ratio. The thickness of peel was determined using screw gauge having a least count of 0.001mm. The diameter of the banana with and without peel was recorded using a steel rule. The load required to cut a cross-sectional slice of peel and pulp was found out by texture analyzer. The average peel thickness of plantain was measured as 2.36 mm. The pulp to peel ratio of Nendran variety varies between 1.75 and 1.77 with an average value of 1.76. The maximum and minimum diameters for Nendran banana with peel were 40.3and 23.29 mm, respectively. The corresponding values for without peel were 33.55 and 24.67 mm, respectively. The maximum load required to cut a cross-sectional slice of peel and pulp was 47N and 27 N respectively. Power operated plantain peeler consists of feeding unit, Peeling unit, Pushing unit, Collection unit, Power transmission assembly and frame assembly. Matured nendran procured from the local market were used for conducting the experiment. The plantains were graded into 3 sets according to their size. The two ends of the matured plantain of Nendran variety were chopped off and then fed through the respective cylindrical guides of diameters 44, 47,47 and 55 mm. Peeling was achieved by the cutting action of the circular blade followed by splitting of the peels by the splitter. The peeled plantains falls down through the inner throat and were collected in the collecting tray. The split peels slides through the outer conical throat and were placed in the discard tray. The capacity of the peeler was estimated as 6.62, 13.23 and 16.81 kg/h, respectively for small, medium and large size plantains. Similarly, the material loss and peeling efficiency for small, medium and large size plantains were calculated as 6.8, 8.15, 8.21 percent and 96.7, 92.9, 91.2 percent, respectively. The peeling capacity of the developed machine is found to be four times more effective than manual peeling. This machine eliminates the drudgery involved in manual peeling and saves time.