Design and construction of a tomato sorter.

Abstract

Sorting and grading are the most important. unit operations in packing houses by which it enables to obtain a good and appealing packing system. To standardize the tomatoes for marketing in the local and export markets, the rotary screen tomato sorter was developed. It consists of cylindrical wire meshed screens, pedal operated system. The performance evaluation was done to optimizing the peripheral speed and feed rate. As the tomatoes are fed through the hopper into the rotating drum like wire mesh, it gets separated according to size. It is portable and can. be used in the field. By conducting different studies, the efficiency of the sorter at best speeds of 5rpm and 10rpm were found to be 86.5% and 75.8% with through put capacities of 89.6Kg/hr and 111 kg/h respectively at 109 inclination angle of the screen.