Design, development and performance evaluation of a new-type fruit vegetable washer

Loam soil often sticks to fruit and vegetable, once they are harvested from the field in developing countries due mainly to agricultural farming habits. Subsequenly prior to be sold on the market and used by people, it is obligatory to clean soil particle from their surface. Although they can be washed by hand, this manner seems to be common only in family. For the medium-size businesses or restaurant, it is truly required to have a mechanical washer. Baring in mind the existing washing concepts, in this paper, a multi-functional fruit and vegetable washer was proposed. This new-type washer used a combination of horizontal shaking and rotation yielded by slider-crank mechanism with spring to clean the sample. The first prototype was successfully manufactured and its performance was evaluated by washing different types of vegetables including water spinatch, bok choy, and carrot. Indeed, these vegetable were visually free of soil particle, once they had been machined-washed. A positive outcome of the first prototype promises for commercial production in the near future.