Design and Development of Destalking Machine for Dry Chilli
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Date
2020-12-28
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Publisher
MPUT, UDAIPUR
Abstract
India is the highest producer, consumer and consigner of Chilli
(Capsicum annuum) in the world. Further, the production and processing of dry chilli is an
essential contributor to the country’s economy. Harvesting and processing of whole dry
chilli is typically labor intensive, the way of perceiving the challenges faced by the chilli
growers and processing industry is to mechanize the processing of chilli, which includes
destalking of whole chilli. Destalking is a labor intensive process to remove the calyx and
stalk of chilli from its pod. Destalking may be done in the field at the time of harvest, or
may be done manually during processing, typically when the whole chilli are used to
process for its products
It’s a routine trend in an agriculture farming that whenever there is an increase in
labor costs, the farmer’s shifts to grow low profitable crops. The lack of destalking
technology has limited acceptance of post harvest mechanization as it merely moved the
hand labours from the field to become non-farming labours. Moreover, the present
conventional method of destalking of chilli is causing health problems such as TB and
asthma to the laborers. These challenges have also diminished grower's or processors
ability to grow and process the chilli crop. The mechanization in chilli processing,
especially destalking process not only resolves the above challenges but can be direct
revenue generator to the farmers and the processors.
Considering the facts and limitations, a portable, low cost destalking machine for
chilli was developed. The developed machine had primary components such as shaft,
trammel cylinder, scrapping blade, hopper, stalk and destalk chilli collector, 3 phase 1 hp
motor and VFD.
Various engineering properties of dry chilli were evaluated such as geometrical
dimensions such as, average length, width, thickness, arithmetic mean, geometric mean
diameter, size were 109.4, 16.72, 6.30, 44.14, 21.85 and 22.48 mm, respectively. Whereas,
average surface area was 15.11 mm2 and average spericity index was 0.20. The gravimetric
properties such as average bulk density, true density and porosity were found to be 270
kg/m3, 130 kg/m3 and 51.51, respectively. The color values such as L*, a*, b * were 47.32,
83.41 and 44.43, respectively. Hardness of pod and stalk were 40.44 and 66.06 N/mm2,
109
respectively. Whereas, coefficient of friction for stainless steel, mild steel and galvanic iron
were 0.36, 0.40 and 0.54 respectively.
The performance of the machine was evaluated for five levels of moisture content
(6, 8, 10, 12, 14 per cent), five levels of feed rate (35, 45, 55, 65, 75 kg/h), five levels of
cylinder inclination (0, 3, 6, 9, 12) and five levels of rotating speed of cylinder (5, 10, 15,
20, 25 rpm)) to study their effect on machine’s destalking capacity, destalking efficiency,
amount of chilli broken (per cent)and energy consumptions.
The developed destalking machine had maximum destalking capacity of 60.83 kg/h
and destalking efficiency of 83.80 per cent, and minimum amount of chilli broken (per
cent)of 4.4 and energy consumption of 6.2 kWh.
The best performance of developed destalking machine was found at moisture
content of 10.37 per cent, feed rate of 61.67 kg/h, and cylinder inclination of 5o and cylinder
speed of 15 rpm with overall desirability of 0.78.
The payback period, internal rate of return and net present worth of developed
destalking machine were found to be 2.13 year, 34 per cent and `. 2,76,502/-, respectively.
The cost of destalking operation of the machine is `. 100 per 51 kg whereas, the
cost of destalking manual method is found to `. 300 per 50 kg batch. Manual and machine
cost ratio per hour was found to be 1:3.
Description
Design and Development of Destalking Machine for Dry Chilli
Keywords
Citation
Srinivas G. And Champawat P.S.