MANUFACTURE OF TOMATOES HALVING PROTOTYPE FOR NATURAL DRYING PROCESS

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assist. Prof., Fac. of Ag. Eng., Al-Azhar U., Assiut Branch, Egypt.

Abstract

Tomatoes are an important component of the human diet but possess a very short post-harvest shelf-life which makes them highly perishable. This causes a problem in the transportation and handling of tomato fruits. The open natural sun drying of tomatoes in Upper Egypt is the best solution to this problem. Most processes of halving cutting tomatoes are manual, this process is a cumbersome, time-consuming, and labor-intensive job. So, this research aims to develop, fabricated, and evaluated the performance of halving cutting tomatoes prototype made with local materials, suitable for three cultivars (Nesma, Masa, and 2020) costumed for sun drying. The major components of the machine include the frame, the conveyor belt, cutting sow blade (smooth edge, inclined and straight teeth), electric motor, and power transmission system. The factors for evaluating performance of prototype included estimating the appropriate feeding rate, percentage of damage rate, cutting efficiency and productivity and calculating initial operating costs compared to manual halving costs. The results of the prototype performance evaluation showed that increasing the linear speed of the conveyor belt leads to decrease in productivity while decrease in cutting efficiency of the fruits. The best average productivity was achieved of highest cutting efficiency and least damage percentage at lowest linear speed of conveyor for three cultivars. The results also showed lower operating costs of the prototype at lowest linear speed of conveyor belt compared to manual cutting. Recommended that developing of this prototype to clean, dry and grade the fruits before halving.

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References

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