Design of Pomogranate Aril Separator

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF POMEGRANATE ARIL SEPARATOR

ABSTRACT

Pomegranate has become a high value crop due to increased consumer demand resulting from the potential health benefits obtained through consuming pomegranate fruits and its derived products. The traditional method of extraction of arils involves cutting the fruit into two halves and then manually removing the arils by hitting on the fruit by a ladle. This tends to be very inefficient and highly labour intensive, time consuming and tedious process. At present in the country, there is no mechanical method or machine, commercially available for hygienic separation of arils from pomegranate for small scale markets. The existing need for a novel, easier technique of extraction of arils has led to the development of Pomegranate aril separator. Initially, the physical and textural properties were analysed for the pomegranate fruit and arils which are useful while designing of various parts of aril separator. The components of the machine are a large concave striker, the mounting disc, the rotating disc, frame with the spring attachment and DC electric motor along with the transformer. The cut fruit is kept on the rotating mounting disc consisting of sieve for allowing the passage of only the desirable arils, a holder to hold the fruit firmly and a receptacle to collect the separated arils. The striker hits the peel of the fruit with enough impact force uniformly in all directions by an actuated spring loaded mechanism for quick and easy separation of arils.  On an average, for small, medium, large and very large sized fruits the separation efficiency was found to be 98.31 %, 96.61 %, 93.05 %, and 89. 19 % respectively