Development and Performance Evaluation of Tomato Dehydrating Machine

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a very important staple food worldwide with about 7,500 varieties consumed in diverse ways including: raw in salads, as an ingredient in many dishes, sauces, ketchup and drinks. Tomatoes deteriorate (rotten) easily due to their high moisture content. A tomato dehydrating machine comprising of a spray gun, cam shaft, delivery pipe, three air blowers, drying trough, base and a speed reduction gear box was designed, fabricated and evaluated. The machine is powered by a 1.5hp electric motor. The developed machine has a dehydration efficiency of 81.45%, throughput of 3.7212kg/hr. The dehydrated tomato produced from the machine has ascorbic acid content, lycopene content, calcium content, potassium content and sugar reduction content of 10.6 mg/100g, 78.24 mg/100g, 10.6 mg/100g, 169.0 mg/100g and 2.9 mg/100g respectively which fell between acceptable ranges for the nutritional content of tomato.