Design and testing of small scale fish meat bone separator useful for fish processing.

The present study relates to the food processing machinery and, more specifically machine for producing boneless comminuted meat from raw fish fillet. This machine is of belt and drum type meat bone separator designed for small scale fish processing in a continuous mode. The basic principal involved in this machine is compression force. The electric geared motor consists of 1HP and the conveyor belt has a linear velocity of 19 to 22 m min(-1), which was sufficient to debone the fish effectively. During the meat bone separation trials an efficiency up to 75 % on dressed fish weight basis was observed and with a capacity to separate 70 kg h(-1) of meat from fish at the machine speed of 25 rpm. During the trials, it was demonstrated that there was no significant change in the proximate composition of comminuted fish meat when compared to unprocessed fish meat. This design has a greater emphasis on hygiene, provision for cleaning-in-place (CIP) and gives cost effective need and reliability for small scale industries to produce fish meat in turn used for their value added products.

Optimization of pneumatic sheet extrusion of whole wheat flour poory dough using response surface methodology.

Pneumatic extrusion of whole wheat flour dough is a challenge in the preparation of Poory. In the present study, the pneumatic extrusion process variables (pneumatic pressure, rate of extrusion) and quality of deep fried product (oil uptake, frying time, puffed height) was evaluated to get Poory of maximum overall sensory quality, minimum shear and minimum oil uptake. These parameters depend on the moisture content of wheat dough. Response surface methodology was demonstrated to be an efficient tool for the optimization of process parameters of pneumatic extrusion. The results indicated that extrusion pressure ranging from 3 ~ 6 × 10(5) Pa for the whole wheat flour dough with added moisture of 56 ~ 60 % was found to give a uniform rate of extruded sheet. It was observed that submerged frying time for the extruded dough sheet was in the range of 35 ~ 40 s, with the temperature of the vegetable oil to be in the range of 180 ~ 185 °C. Oil uptake during frying was about 12 ± 1 % and the textural shear force was found to be 9.9 N with an overall sensory score of 7.2 ± 0.5 on nine point scale. The experimental errors for all attributes were non-significant (p > 0.05) and thus optimum variables predicted by the model are found suitable.