M Arshadul Hoque
Senior Scientific Officer
Farm Machinery and Postharvest Process Engineering Division,
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Gazipur-1701.
M Ayub Hossain
Principle Scientific Officer
Farm Machinery and Postharvest Process Engineering Division,
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Gazipur-1701.
Kowshik Kumar Saha
Scientific Officer
Farm Machinery and Postharvest Process Engineering Division,
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Gazipur-1701.
M Mohabbat Ullah
Principle Scientific Officer
Hill Agricultural Research Station,
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Khagrachari.
M Moniruzzaman
Senior Scientific Officer
Regional Spices research Center,
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Magura.
Dried turmeric is polished to remove the outer dirty skin, roots, soil particles and transformed them into relatively smooth, bright and yellowish rhizomes. In farm level turmeric polishing is carried out manually by conventional methods which are slow, tedious and labour-intensive. To overcome these problems a turmeric polisher was designed and fabricated in Farm Machinery and Postharvest Process Engineering Division of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute during 2011-12. Field performance evaluation of the turmeric polisher was conducted in Gazipur; Bogra; Khagrachari and Magura. The capacities of the polisher were found to be 63.5, 55.04, 62.6 and 63.2 kg/h in Gazipur, Bogra, Khagrachari and Magura, respectively. The price of the polisher is Taka 25,000. The average cost of polishing was Tk. 1.04 per kg whereas it costs Tk. 6.00 per kg for manual polishing. The use of the polisher would reduce the cost of polishing by 83%.
Capacity, drum, electric motor, turmeric, turmeric polisher
Gazipur, Bogra, Khagrachari and Magura.
Farm Mechanization
(i) To develop a turmeric polisher
(ii) To test the performance of the polisher at laboratory and field
(iii) To Make an economic analysis of the turmeric polisher
A turmeric polisher was designed and fabricated at the workshop of the Farm Machinery and Postharvest Process Engineering Division of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Joydebpur, Gazipur during 2011-12. It was made of locally available materials. The materials used for the fabrication of different parts of the machine were MS angle bar, MS flat bar, MS rod, MS sheet, MS shaft, rubber sheet, ball-bearing, and miscellaneous small spares. The functional parts of the machine are (1) Power source (2) Power transmission (3) Rotating drum (4) Mainframe (5) Collection tray. During rotation of the drum, turmeric is rubbed against the inside expanded wire mesh surface and polishing is achieved. The outer skin, rubbed by polishing, fell through the perforation of the drum. The holding capacity of the turmeric in polisher is kept generally 75% of the drum volume to facilitate turning and mixing of dried rhizomes during polishing. During rotation inside the drum, the speed above which centrifuging occurred was called the critical speed. The rpm of the polishing drum must be less than this critical speed otherwise proper polishing of the rhizomes will not take place. The colour of dried rhizome of turmeric samples were measured by a chromameter (CR-400, Minolta Co. Ltd., Japan) in CIE (Commission Internationale l’Eclairage) Lab chromaticity coordinates.
Research Report
(i) The field performance of the polisher was satisfactory and the users were satisfied.
(ii) Average capacity of the turmeric polisher was found to be 61 kg/h.
(iii) The polisher can save 89% time and 83% cost of polishing.
(iv) The turmeric polisher can be recommended for the turmeric producer and processing industries.
Report/Proceedings, Booklet/Leaflet