Modification and performance evaluation of a dual-function okra processing device

Abstract

The performance evaluation of a dual-function device for slicing and drying Okra developed at the Federal College of Agriculture, Ishiagu Nigeria was carried out and reported.  The device was designed to slice and dry okra in one single-sequence operation. The physical characteristics of crop sample were investigated, characterised and processed in the device to determine their performance under steady state process conditions. The effects of the modified machine on crop processing were also investigated. The results shows that the mean equivalent diameters for each okra sample categorized as A, B and C are; 24. 54mm, 19.20mm and 15.79mm respectively. The slenderness ratios and sphericity determined for each of the three samples were; 3.04, 3.11, 2.79 and 0.56, 0.55, 0.62 for big, medium and small sizes respectively. The results of performance evaluation of the existing and the modified machine were compared. The maximum slicing efficiency of the modified device is 97.50% with an overall efficiency of 95.29%, the machine capacity is 20.15kg/hr while the average chip length, width and thickness are 19.56mm, 7.52mm and 3.39mm respectively and drying efficiency of 87.68%. The results showed significant improvement in modified machine performance in terms of slicing efficiency while there are no significant difference in output capacity.