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.