DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF OLIVE GREADER

Abstract

Grading of fruits and vegetables is an important operation affecting quality, handling and storage of produce. Manual grading is costly, time-consuming and inefficient. The food industry relies on a rapid and accurate separation and classification of fruits immediately after harvest before spoilage fruits in this study developed a simple prototype machine for olive fruit separation with a small cylinder type grading machine. Two operating parameters each of four levels were studied. The studied parameters included, riddle revolving speed 25, 40, 55 and 70 rpm (0.366, 0.471, 0.576, and 0.680 m/s), and riddles feeding rates (50, 70, 90 and 110 kg/h). The effect of machine parameters on grading efficiency (%), grading productivity (kg/h) and the mechanical damage percentage, were also considered. Results showed that the machine is quite successful for grading Olive fruits. The best result was obtained at 55 rpm riddles revolving speeds and 90 kg/h riddles feeding rate. At these values, maximum grading efficiency of 93.92% and permissible mechanical damage of Olive fruits 3.42% were obtained. These results proved that, the proper operating parameters corresponded with theoretical considerations as the relevant for machine operation. INTRODUCTION live is one of the economic crops that have multiple purposes and widely grown in Egypt, and it has a very high potential for exportation. In Egypt, the cultivated area of Olive crop is 227683 feddans, which annually produces over 698927 million tones (Ministry of Agric. and Land Reclamation, Economic Affairs Sector, 2015). Losses in quantity and quality affect on horticultural crops between harvest and consumption. The magnitude of postharvest losses in fresh fruits and vegetables is an estimated 5 to 25 % and 20 to 50 % in developing countries, depending up on the commodity.