DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A MOTORISED PLANTAIN CHIPPING MACHINE USING RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY

Abstract

A lot of drudgeries and unhygienic processes are involved in manual chipping of plantain. These problems
necessitated the development of a motorised plantain chipping machine with a capacity of 450 kg/h. The
machine is made up of a cutting device, a feeding mechanism, the support frame and an electric motor as a
source of power. The cutting mechanism consists of the stainless steel blades, a connecting rod, a guide
frame for the blades and pulleys. The blades are arranged perpendicular to the plantain fingers. During
performance evaluation of the chipper, the effects of the number of cutting blades, inclination of the angles
of the cutting blades and cutting speed as they affected the chipping efficiency were investigated. Response
Surface Methodology was used in the experiments because it uses very few experimental runs to describe how
the test variables affect the response. It also helps to determine the inter-relationships among the test
variables on the response and also helps to describe the combined effects of all the test variables on the
response. The highest chipping efficiency of 70% was obtained when the machine was operated at the speed
of 975 rpm, with a blade angle inclination of 300
and with nine cutting blades. Generally, it was found that
the chipping efficiency increased as the number of cutting blades are increased. Also the chipping efficiency
increased with the speed of the machine but was not affected by the inclination angles of the blades. The
linear effects of speed, the linear and quadratic effects of the number of blades significantly affected the
chipping efficiency of the machine at 5% probability.