DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SEAWEED CHIPS PROCESSING MACHINE

Asturias, Peter L., Calinao, Franz Marion M., Magadia, Christian Arlo S.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Batangas State University
E-mail: asturiaspeterl@gmail.com, franzmarioncalinao@gmail.com,
christianarlo.magadia@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
The Gawad Kalinga Rural Improvement Club in Nasugbu, Batangas provides a
special variety of chips of high nutrition called seaweed chips. Seaweed, as the raw material of
the chips is known for its rich content of iodine which is highly needed by the body for health
purposes such as metabolism control and thyroid functions. It is also rich in vitamin B-12 and
vitamin A needed by the body for digestion process.
However, seaweed chips processing requires a lot of time and patience to be
processed. The Gawad Kalinga Rural Improvement Club uses manual labor to process these
chips and it can take up to twelve hours to process three kilograms of dough into an
approximate of five hundred packs of seaweed chips. The study was mainly concerned about
providing a machine that would ease the production process of seaweed chips and minimize the
processing time of these chips.
The study aimed to develop a seaweed chips processing machine according to
its system components and design specifications for the thinning, cutting and drying processes.
Preliminary tests were performed with the machine to determine operating temperature,
operating time and the capacity.
Three batches of dough; 125g, 150g and 200g were tested in temperatures of
30C, 40C, 50C and 60C to obtain the operating temperature of the machine and additional
all-purpose flour; and one-fourth of the mass of feed dough, was added to the surface of the
dough when fed unto the machine. The operating temperature of the machine was based on the
temperature which gave acceptable chips and its operating time and production rate. The
operating temperature of the machine was established into 40C.
After the operating temperature was established, the capacity and operating time
of the machine were determined after feeding 250g, 300g and 350g of dough unto the machine
based on the percent yield. The capacity of the machine was 250g with an operating time of
1.53 minutes.
The performance of the machine was evaluated by determining the production
rate and percent yield of the machine. Based from the data and results of the performance
testing, the average production rate of the machine was 113.4238 g/min and an average
percent yield of 70.45%.
The qualities of seaweed chips were also determined including the length, width,
thickness and moisture content and the average measurement were 37mm, 21mm, 1.1mm and
37.5140% respectively.
The seaweed chips processed by the machine underwent a laboratory
examination to determine its microbial content including the E-coli count and Salmonella content
and it was found out to be safe and edible considering that no microbial growth was observed.