Development of Affordable Machine for Sizing Egyptian Onion

Size grading is an important operation in food processing for the onion export industry in particular. The aim of this work was to develop an appropriate machine for sizing onions, reduce losses and reduce grading costs. Maximum sizing efficiency obtained was 94.9±2.82 % at zero longitudinal angle and at a belt speed of (0.23 m/s), while it was 94.5±3.69% at 10o longitudinal angle for the same belt speed. The overall average of the sizing efficiency (94.33%) was recorded at 20o side angle and the highest grading capacity (1.72 t/h) was obtained at 10o side angle and 10o longitudinal angle. Total costs of grading the produce were 3.89 LE/t. (0.7 US$/t). This machine has the potential to size other crops like potatoes, tomatoes, apples and citrus fruits

Equilibrium Moisture Content of Some Bioplastic Materials for Agricultural Use

This work focused on the determination of equilibrium moisture content (EMC) of some bioplastic materials that could be used for agricultural foil mulch. Equilibrium moisture content (EMC) is very important to determine the desirable conditions of microorganism’s growth, which causes material deterioration and degradation. Thus, this work aimed to determine the EMC of some commercial bioplastic mulch such as (Bioflex, Ecoflex, Chitosan, Mater-bi, and Bi-OPL). The bioplastic materials were put under different temperature (10-50°C) and relative humidity (43-95%) Conditions. The results indicated that the EMC of all materials increased while increasing the relative humidity, but decreased with increasing temperature. But the relative humidity has a greater effect on the change of moisture content (MC) than the effect of temperature. The data revealed that both of Mater-Bi and Chitosan has a great effect by changing the relative humidity from 43 to 95%, which increased the EMC by 9.87 and 12.22%, respectively. On the other hand, there is a small effect on the EMC with relative humidity changes on each of Ecoflex (1.41%), Bioflex (2.4%) and Bi-OPL (0.5%)