Performance Evaluation of Aloe vera Leaf Slicing Machine

Abstract

The Aloe plant belongs to a member of the family Liliaceae, which comprises more than 360 different species. Aloe Vera has a number of uses and mainly they are used as a food preservative and herbal medicine. In the manufacturing of whole leaf Aloe Vera powder, slicing is one of the important unit operations after trimming. Presently, manual slicing is most commonly followed in Indian Aloe industries, which is time consuming, tedious, unhygienic, expensive and sometimes hazardous. The design and development of Aloe vera leaf slicing machine is to solve the aforementioned problems. This machine mainly consist of belt conveyor, feed and conveyor roller, chain sprockets, knives, power transmission mechanism and frame. The performance evaluation of the machine was evaluated under three belt conveyor speed (0.251, 0.188 and 0.125 m. s-1) and three No. of knives (2, 4 and 8). It was found that 0.251 m. s-1 belt conveyor speed with 8 No. of knives was optimized condition. The machine is simple in construction, easy to operate and does not require special skill. The results of the test carried out showed that the time required to slice equal length of Aloe vera with the machine is 24 times less than the manual process. This machine has sliced efficiency of about 90.46% with effective capacity of 648.21 kg. h-1.