Automated Chamber for Prickle Pear Cauterization Volume 3 - Issue 1

Federico Hahn* and Angel Hernandez

• IAUIA Universidad Autonoma Chapingo, Texcoco México

Received: January 18, 2021   Published: January 26, 2021

Corresponding author: Rohit Kumar, Department of Electrical Engineering, Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India

DOI: 10.32474/ARME.2021.03.000152

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Abstract

Mexico is the world largest producer of cactus pear (Opuntia spp.) and is searching for new processes that allow to export them. The fruit is rich in nutrients but is highly perishable having ambient shelf life of 9 days. Cauterization and cryo-cauterization techniques have increased shelf life to 2 and 3 months without refrigeration. An automatic system was developed to flip the fruit towards the dry-ice wall inside a chamber. A horizontal actuator pushed the container to cauterize the fruit. The entire cauterizing process for each fruit lasted 23 seconds. By exchanging the dry-ice wall every 500 fruits, a 100% cauterizer efficiency was achieved.

Keywords: Automatic Chamber; Cauterization; Prickle Pear; embedded system

Abstract| Introduction| Mechanism for Pear Cauterization| Embedded System| Experimental Fruit Measurements| Chamber and Mechanism Evaluation| Conclusion| Acknowledgement| References|