भारत की कृषि अर्थव्यवस्था को बढ़ावा देना: कटाई के बाद का प्रबंधन और कृषि प्रसंस्करण के माध्यम से भारत के विकास को बदलना

भारत की कृषि अर्थव्यवस्था को बढ़ावा देना: कटाई के बाद का प्रबंधन और कृषि प्रसंस्करण के माध्यम से भारत के विकास को बदलन

Design and Development of a High Capacity Multi Fruit Grader for Commercial Applications

A commercial scale multi fruit grader suitable for grading different types of spherical shaped fruit was designed and developed. The fruit grader consisted of a grading unit, horizontal belt conveyor and feeding unit. The grader has provision to separate fruits into five grades by adjusting flap spacing between 30 and 145 mm. The grader is operated by a 0.74 kW single phase motor. This grader was installed in a farm and evaluated for grading citrus, apple, sweet lemon and orange fruits for two seasons. About 1000 tonnes of fruits were graded using this grader. The overall grading efficiency of the grader was 93-96 % for citrus, apple, sweet lemon and orange fruits. The capacity of the grader was 5 t/h at grading conveyor speed of 7 m/minute and there was no damage to the fruits while grading. The cost of the grader is Rs. 1 lakh. The cost of operation and energy consumption of the grader is Rs. 0.30/kg and 0.25 kW/t, respectively. This fruit grader has the advantages of high capacity, low energy consumption, low cost, minimal handling and tumbling of the fruits. The breakeven for the grader is worked out as 500 tonnes of fruits. It is most suited for commercial application

Methyl Ester of Cottonseed Oil Blended with Ethanol as a Renewable Fuel on a Multi-cylinder CI Engine

A renewable fuel has advantages of saving the petroleum fuel and make environment pollution free when used on an engine. Different blends of the methyl ester of cottonseed oil with ethanol in the proportion of 100:0, 90:10, 80:20, 70:30, 60:40 and 50:50 were prepared and compared with high speed diesel on the performance of a multi-cylinder CI engine. A 37.3 kW variable speed diesel engine was tested for performance on reference diesel fuel and selected blends. Engine performance on the blend containing 10 per cent ethanol in terms of brake power, indicated mean effective pressure, brake specific fuel consumption and exhaust gas temperature was almost equal or had better performance than diesel. On an average, brake thermal efficiency was increased up to 10% as ethanol blending ratio increased in the methyl ester of cottonseed oil (at 10% ethanol mix) at full load condition

Design, Development and Evaluation of Tubular Blazer: A Sustainable Gum Production Hand Tool

The demand for natural gums is increasing due to their applications in food, pharmaceutical and other industries. However, the traditional extraction method used to tap the gum causes severe injury to the trees, and ultimately population of these trees and gum production from trees is decreasing day by day. To overcome this problem, a tubular blazer was designed, developed and tested at ICAR-National Institute of Secondary Agriculture, Ranchi. The overall dimension of developed tool i.e., length, width and height were 235 mm× 130 mm× 25 mm, respectively, weighing 0.77 kg. The tool can be used for different gum producing tree such as Buchanania lanzan, Moringa olifera lam, Butea monosperma, Tarminalia bellirica and Sterculia uren. The testing result of the study showed that the developed tool was simple to operate and safe for making blaze in trees for gum production. The tubular blazer was found suitable for chironji gum (Buchanania lanzan) tapping producing about 661.4 g and 249.4 g of the gum with and without application of gum inducer, respectively. Use of developed tubular blazer saves approximately 95% of time as well as cost for blaze making compared to manual drilling method. Further, the developed tool was found to be less injurious to trees in terms of volume of bark removal in making blaze for gum production