DESIGN OF IMPROVED CASSAVA PEELING MACHINE

Cassava peeling remains the only unsuccessfully mechanized process which has constituted a global challenge to the cassava food industries. A major constraint in existing cassava peeling machine is the poor quality of finished products obtained, coupled with poor efficiency of the technologies. This research work is focused on the design and development of an improved continuous cassava peeling machine. The machine frame work is rectangular in shape measuring 2700mm in length by 1200mm in width. The principal parts of this design work includes a hopper, electric motor, shafts, bearings, wire brushes, pressure plate and a Vbelt attached to the pulley that rotates the shafts embedded with wire brushes. Two conceptual designs were generated of which the best concept was selected via decision matrix for detail design. The machine was fabricated and tested and the following results were obtained from the analysis. An average value of 0.0617 and 0.095 were obtained for the throughput capacity and mechanical damage. An average value of 4.99% of useful flesh was lost and average peeling efficiency of 72.67 was obtained and this shows that the continuous cassava peeling machine was efficient.