Performance Evaluation of Electric Motor Driven Turmeric Slicing Machine

This study investigated the performance of an electric motor driven turmeric rhizome slicer machine. The physical properties of turmeric rhizome such as geometric mean diameter, arithmetic mean diameter, square mean diameter, equivalent diameter, aspect ratio, sphericity, shape factor, bulk density, porosity, coefficient of friction, and angle of repose were studied. According to the determination results, these parameters were found to be 23.9 mm, 30.3 mm, 45.3 mm, 33.2 mm, 0.33, 0.4, 1.8, 336 kg m-3, 81.7%, and 28.4°, respectively. It was observed during the test that the machine slices the rhizomes of turmeric into slices with a desired thickness range of 1.5 to 2 mm. According to findings, at 500 rpm rotor speed and 10 kg min-1 feeding rates, the maximum slicing capacity of 824.7 kg h-1 was recorded; at 300 rpm rotor speed and 15 kg min-1 feeding rates, the minimum slicing capacity was recorded. At 500 rpm of rotor speed and 15 kg min-1 of feeding rate, a maximum slicing efficiency of 97.4% was found, while at 300 rpm and 10 kg min-1 feeding rate, a minimum slicing efficiency of 93.9% was noted. From test results, at 500 rpm rotor speed and feed rates of 15 kg min-1, the minimum material loss was recorded as 4.06%, while at 300 rpm rotor speed and 10 kg min-1 feed rate, the maximum material loss was recorded as 7.6%. This turmeric slicing machine is highly recommendable because the machine's performance for slicing the rhizome of turmeric was very impressive based on the test results.