Design and Construction of a Cassava Tuber Knife Peeling Unit

Abstract

Abstract

Peeling of cassava tubers is one of the important steps in processing of cassava chips. The peeling is still manual, which has low capacity and is therefore insufficient for production needs. This project aims to design and fabricate a unit for cassava tuber knife peeling. The unit consists of a structure, power and transmission, and a knife peeling set. The study conditions were at 70, 80 and 90 rpm of knife rotating speed, with 3 different knife peeling types and 2 levels of spring stiffness of knife peeling (8.21 and. 17.19 N/m). The result shows that the most suitable conditions were 90 rpm of knife peeling speed, using a second knife peeling type and a spring stiffness of 17.19 N/m. The capacity was 10.43 seconds/tuber. The peeling efficiency was 90.3 and the percentage of flesh loss was 3.63