Research results of potato tuber cleaning process with ultrasonic treatment
Currently produced machines for harvesting root crops and onions are designed according to well-known tried and tested schemes that have their traditional drawbacks, therefore, such machines initially cannot carry out the technological process of harvesting well. Attempts to use digging machines for mechanization of harvesting (potato diggers, potato harvesters, root-diggers and diggers of other vegetable crops) were not widely spread due to heavy textured soil and poor quality of separation. To eliminate the above disadvantages for cleaning root vegetables, potatoes and onions, a method of ultrasonic treatment has been proposed, which intensifies the process of cleaning root vegetables from soil impurities at the final stage of root vegetables, potatoes and onions processing. The article presents instrumentation for carrying out research on the technological parameters of ultrasound treatment on the quality of the root crop cleaning process from soil impurities, the methodology and results of the laboratory studies of the ultrasonic treatment in the cleaning process of the Red Scarlet potato tubers, the suitable parameters of ultrasonic treatment that intensify the root crop cleaning from soil impurities were determined. The results of the comparative laboratory studies of potato tubers cleaning from soil impurities of different physico-mechanical composition (sandy and loamy soils) allow us to conclude that the best parametres of intensification of ultrasonic treatment with an increase of tuber cleaning θ from 7.2% to 19.5% with sandy soil impurities applied on a tuber with a mass of 50 g to 250 g with an average increase step θ = 2.3% are provided with the technological parameters off_1 = 48 kHz, S = 42 W / cm<sup>2</sup>. Cleaning of potato tubers from loamy soils with identical values of the technological parameters of ultrasonic treatment does not provide a satisfactory cleaning.