DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A MOTORIZED GINGER RHIZOMES PEELING MACHINE USING QUADRI CRANK MECHANISM

Ginger (Zingiber Officinale Roscoe) belongs to the plant family of Zingiberraceae. It is the oldest rhizome widely domesticated as a spice (Onu and Okafor, 2002). In Nigeria, the cultivation of ginger started in 1927 and the locations comprise of Southern Zaria, Jemma Federated districts and neighboring parts of Plateau State but today, ginger is grown nationwide (Okwuowulu, 1997).

NRCRI (2005) proved that ginger grows well in the rainforest region of the country where rainfall is over 2000 mm and altitudes varying from 0 - 800 meters beyond sea level within a temperature range of 25 0C – 35 0C (Njoku et al.,1995). Ginger is a plant with leafy shoots, finger-like perennial underground part or rhizomes called hands and develop to a height of about 1.5 m with an aerial part as high as 0.8 m depending on cultivars and growing environment (Entrepinoys, 2010). It is one of the oldest and most important of all the spices and condiments. In many parts of the world, the cultivation of ginger has been for millennia (Spore, 1992). The major producing areas where the plant is now grown in different parts of Nigeria, include Kaduna, Nassarawa, Sokoto, Zamfara, AkwaIbom, Oyo, Abia and Lagos states while the largest producers of fresh ginger crop in Nigeriastill remain Southern Kaduna in Kachia, Jabba, Jama’a and Kagarko Local Government Areas (KADP, 2000, KADP, 2004;Bernard, 2008).

Ginger is cultivated extensively in India, Nigeria, Jamaica, Sierra-Leone, Indonesia, China, Fiji and Australia, with India producing about 50% of the world’s production (Ali et al., 1991). Assessments by the National Root Crop Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike has found that good quality rhizomes could be grown in the southern part of the country, further confirming Nigeria as one the producers of the crop (Okwuowulu, 1997). Dried ginger, whether for use as the ground spice or for the industrial preparation of its derivatives (ginger oleoresin and ginger oil) is valued for its pleasing combination of aroma, flavour and pungency (Ebewele and Jimoh, 1988). Peeling of ginger is an important unit operation where fully matured rhizomes are scraped with bamboo-splits having pointed ends, to remove the outer skin before drying to accelerate the drying process (Jayashree and Visvanathan, 2014).

However, the average ginger farm size for individual farmers has been reported as 0.26 ha, about half an acre (Ahmed et al., 2004), and that a farmer could have over one plot of small sizes at different locations. Over the years of ginger production in Nigeria, farmers have depended almost exclusively on two major varieties, the yellow ginger “TafinGiwa” known for its spicy and pungent flavour, and the black ginger “Yatsunbiri,” widely cultivated for extraction of its essential oils (Okwuowulu, 1997). The yellow variety is mostly grown in Nigeria because it has the highest demand in the Nigerian market.

Few industries that process ginger in the country make use of imported machinery due to non-availability of simple locally developed machines for its processing and this has adversely affected the production and marketing of ginger in Nigeria, in spite of its great economic potentials. Jayashree and Visvanathan (2014) developed a concentric drum brush type ginger peeler with a capacity to peel 7 kg per batch. The optimum operating conditions for peeling ginger were obtained at drum load of 7 kg, for inner drum speed of 45 rpm, outer drum speed of 20 rpm and for the peeling duration of 15 min. The peeling efficiency was 61 % and the corresponding material loss was 5.33 %. A brush type ginger peeling machine with two continuous brush belts moving vertically in the opposite direction was reported by Agrawal et al. (1987). The maximum peeling efficiency of ginger obtained was 84.3 % at a belt speed of 85 rpm for belt spacing of 1 cm. Ali et al. (1991) reported the development of an abrasive brush type ginger peeling machine consisting of two continuous vertical belts provided with 32-gauge steel wire brush, 2 cm long and having a peeling zone of 135 cm, had a maximum peeling efficiency of    85 %.

In spite of the contributions of the indigenous equipment developers to develop machines for processing this agricultural product locally, but these machines are either ineffective or inefficient. Farmers still resolve into processing their ginger using primordial practices inherited from earliest traditions resulting in poor and unhygienic processed ginger (Yiljep et al., 2005). This forms the basis of this study: development and performance evaluation of motorized ginger rhizome peeling machine using quadri-crank mechanism.

The general objective of this study is to develop a motorized ginger rhizomes peeling machine using quadri-crank mechanism.

The specific objectives of this study are:

Proper design, development and performance evaluation of ginger peeling machine is the important and necessary step in unit operation as this is an essential process to accelerate the drying process of the product. Developments and modifications have taken place in machinery and equipment used to process ginger rhizomes especially in peeling, to meet the need of the small scale ginger farmers and industries (Agrawal et al., 1987; Ali et al., 1991 and Jayashree and Visvanathan, 2014). Despite all the developments in ginger peeling machine, the farmers still fall back to the manual method of peeling. This usually results in low processing output of ginger products by the farmers, which will eventually yield little or no return. This is because of high level of drudgery associated with the manual method which entails using bamboo or knife thereby making the production to be subsistence (Onu and Okafor, 2002). It is therefore essential for a proper design, development and performance evaluation of ginger peeling machine for easy processing. This will enable a full recovery of oil or juice from the product and increases the availability of the products being produced from ginger. Since ginger is an important crop of commerce, mechanization in various handling operations is of urgent need. The machine will improve the postharvest quantity and quality of peeled dried ginger, and also encourage production of ginger rhizomes in the country.

The scope of this study covers the design, development, and performance evaluation of ginger rhizomes peeling machine.