Design and comparative analysis of beater knife mechanism for mango pulp extraction

Abstract

The purpose of this research work was to design, fabricate and evaluate an enhanced fruit pulp extraction unit to convert the available fruit into pulp to increase profitability and to limit post-harvest losses. This study introduced a newly developed mechanism with beater-type blades having serrated knives. As compared to the existing screw-type pulpers this newly developed pulping machine is quite lightweight, cheap, easy to fabricate, requires low maintenance, and has a low running cost. The major factors that were considered while planning included cost-effectiveness, manufacturing ease, high efficiency and user-friendly operation. The machine works by applying shearing and centrifugal forces on the fed fruits through an innovatively designed set of blades. The data like mass of fruits and residual waste, extracted juice volume and time taken for juice extraction were collected and used to calculate the key performance indicators (KPIs) which included juice yield, extraction efficiency and extraction loss of the unit. The mango types like Sindhri, Chaunsa and Langra were used and maximum average juice yield and extraction efficiency were obtained for Chaunsa variety at 600 rpm with 700-micron diameter sieve mesh size and 25 mm beater and sieve mesh clearance. The beater-type and screw-type pulpers have juice yield percentages of 63.40% & 34.56%, extraction efficiencies of 56.70% & 54.15%, power consumption of 1HP & 2.5HP and manufacturing costs of USD1275 & USD2000 respectively. The processing capacity of this pulp processing unit is 60-70kg/h.