Design and Development of Fruit Washer

It has been observed that washing of fruits are mostly done manually. This method involves a lot of drudgery which is inefficient and time consuming. Hence, there is a need to mechanize this process for ease of operation and maintenance of hygiene. An attempt has been made to develop a fruit washer which is conceptualized to wash a range of fruits based on roundness or spherical shape. These fruits are orange, mango, apple, pineapple pawpaw, cashew and passion fruits. The machine is designed with essential components being the feed hopper, roller brushes, stainless tank, top cover, water jet system, control valve, chain drive, bearings, main frame and discharge outlet. The machine has been developed with the locally available materials powered by 3hp electric motor. Test carried out on the machine successfully revealed that the washing efficiency and the machine capacity were 89.73% & 480.57 kg/h respectively for orange and 90.16% & 326.63 kg/h respectively for pineapple.