Development of Hand-Operated Mechanical Ginger Peeler

Ginger, an underground rhizome, is valued as a spice and is used in both dry and fresh form. The process of peeling is labour-intensive and is a time-consuming operation in post-harvest handling of ginger done manually by women labour. To reduce time and labour requirement, a mechanical ginger peeler having a square mesh drum was developed. Peeling trials were conducted for varying drum loads (6kg, 8kg and 10kg), varying drum speeds (35rpm, 40rpm and 45rpm) and for different peeling durations (5 min, 10 min and 15 min). Optimum machine parameters for maximum efficiency were: drum load of 8 kg per batch, operated at drum speed of 40rpm for peeling duration 15 min. Peeling efficiency and material loss at optimum conditions were determined to be 55.60% and 4.68%, respectively. Dry ginger obtained after mechanical peeling was found to contain essential oil at 2%, oleoresin 4.6%, moisture content 9.82% and crude fibre content 2.5%.