Design of Banana Tree Preparing Machine for Making Banana Rope

Abstract

Banana tree preparing machine for making banana rope was designed to be able to slice the banana tree, make many rope at once together with squeezed water from the banana rope to reduced the drying time. There was a process of spraying the sodium metabisulfite solution so that after drying the banana rope was white. It consisted of four main mechanisms: conveyor unit, cutting unit, spray unit and squeezing units. The conveyor unit consists of 2 rollers, turning in opposite directions to pull the banana tree into the machine. The banana tree was feed to cutting unit, the cutters were slited the banana tree along the length of the banana tree. The banana tree was feed until it touched the limit switch installed on the back of the slit cutter, ordered to spray sodium methadite sulfite solution on banana tree. Then enter the squeezing units which the two sets of rollers had the same characteristics as the conveyor unit. The distance between the 3 mm rollers served to squeezd water from the banana tree. Test of the Banana tree preparing machine at the speeds of the conveyor unit were 25, 50 and 75 rpm, respectively. The speed of the squeezing units was equal to the speed of the conveyor unit. The optimum rotational speed of the conveyor units was 864 rpm resulted in the working capacity at 184.5 kg h^-1 and only 1 day to dry in the sun. The banana rope had a whiteness index and the maximum tensile strength was 70 and 10.9 MPa respectively. Economical analysis showed that the machine worked 2,080 h year^-1, the average costs was found to be 97,104.5 Baht year^-1, payback period 3 month and the break even point of the machine that considering the prepared banana tree weight to be 12.5 ton year^-1.