Development of A Semi-Automatic Straw Mushroom Substrate Briquetting Machine

Abstract

The objectives for developing a semi-automatic straw mushroom briquetting machine were to reduce the production costs and control the similarity of products quality by using PLC to control the machine. The initial moisture content of the substrate was 54 %wb which was reduced to about 1 cm of size with the shredder machine. Initial pressure variables of pneumatic piston were 3, 4 and 5 bar. Experiments were done in triplicate, and every test had initial substrate of about 18 kg that, in theory, must produce about 30 bags. The metric value is density in the range of 0.36-0.38 g/cm³. The experiment found that in each pressure had similar mass in the bag, mass loss and compressed time. An increase in piston pressure resulted to a rising trend of the density at 0.366±0.02, 0.371±0.02 and 0.386±0.02 g/cm³. The compressive strength only considered the criteria of 141 ± 3 bag / hr, 188 ± 2 bag / hr and 138 ± 3 bag / hr. The efficiency of compression were 63.34%, 86.67% and 66.67% respectively.  A comparison of the labor cost of 0.5 Baht / bag with the 4 bar pressure, which was the optimum condition, showed that the production cost was lower by about 0.21 Baht / bag, thus reducing the cost by approximately 10,485 Baht / month, resulting in a payback period of approximately 6 months.