Development and performance evaluation of olive greader [electronic resource].
تطوير وتقييم الأداء لآلة تدريج الزيتون
- p. 19-38.
Includes bibliographic reference.
Grading of fruits and vegetables is an important operation affecting quality, handling and storage of produce. Manual grading is costly, time-consuming and inefficient. The food industry relies on a rapid and accurate separation and classification of fruits immediately after harvest before spoilage fruits in this study developed a simple prototype machine for olive fruit separation with a small cylinder type grading machine. Two operating parameters each of four levels were studied. The studied parameters included, riddle revolving speed 25, 40, 55 and 70 rpm (0.366, 0.471, 0.576, and 0.680 m/s), and riddles feeding rates (50, 70, 90 and 110 kg/h). The effect of machine parameters on grading efficiency (%), grading productivity (kg/h) and the mechanical damage percentage, were also considered. Results showed that the machine is quite successful for grading Olive fruits. The best result was obtained at 55 rpm riddles revolving speeds and 90 kg/h riddles feeding rate. At these values, maximum grading efficiency of 93.92% and permissible mechanical damage of Olive fruits 3.42% were obtained. These results proved that, the proper operating parameters corresponded with theoretical considerations as the relevant for machine operation.