Development of Combinatorial Mass Adjustment Mechanism for Chinese Chive

Abstract

Mass adjustment mechanisms perform cumbersome work that is encountered in postharvest processing of leafy vegetables such as spinach and Chinese chive to ensure that the delivery meets shipment standards.

We devised basic test equipment for the mass adjustment of the Chinese chive; the equipment combines a few small bundles to minimize such cumbersome work. The basic test equipment consists mainly of a load cell and 8 buckets, and is controlled by a programmable logic controller. Small bundles of Chinese chive are fed into buckets that are weighed and stored in order, and the minimum combinatorial bundles that weigh more than the target weight are selected. All mass adjustment tests were conducted with a target weight of 110g.

It was found that with feed bundles of 35g, 91-96% of combinatorial bundles weighed within 110-115g, whereas 83-96% of combinatorial bundles fell within same weight range with feed bundles of 55g. Further, it took about 17s and 13s for the 35g and 55g feed bundles to achieve the targeted combinatorial weights, respectively.