Design and Fabrication of Cassava Grating Machine

Abstract

The Cassava grating machine that was designed has two modes of operation, it can be powered either electrically or manually. It takes care of power failure problems. The Cassava is fed with the Machine through the hopper made of metal sheet to the granting drum, which rotates at a constant speed. This process grates the cassava into cassava pulp. The chute made up of metal sheet accepts the pulp and sends it out because of its inclination which is operated manually. The efficiency of the machine was found to be 82.7%, which the efficiency of the electrically powered machine was found to be 79.5%. The need for the hygienic processing of cassava, is very important as well as the prevalent conditions in the commercial grating areas of this staple food as it is likely to be affected by food contamination. A home-scale cassava grating machine was designed and fabricated, with machine efficiency, safety factors, and portability all taken into consideration. The grating hopper and drum are modified with the drum having a stainless-steel sheet wrapped around a galvanized mild steel core. The machine runs on a single phase 6.5HP (horse power), electric motor, multiple customers with increased through-put when compared to other available grating machines. The performance efficiency of the grater for fresh cassava samples depends on the results showing significant variation for combination of process parameters. This study carried out the performance and optimization evaluation of single barrel cassava grating machine on selected fresh and stored cassava species. The species were used at different levels of moisture content, 70.4% db. and 58.4% db. depicting the average moisture contents obtained for fresh and stored cassava respectively.