Design and fabrication of portable cleaning machine for raw edible bird’s nest

Abstract

Edible bird’s nest is one of the demanding food products. Removing the impurities in raw edible bird’s nest is generally known as the most complicated cleaning process especially for Grade C raw edible bird’s nest. Conventional cleaning method is not efficiency, time-consuming and requires large workforce to process small quantities of edible bird’s nests. Existing cleaning machines for raw edible bird’s nest are either large in size or expensive. It is not affordable by household consumer and small edible bird’s nest enterprise. Cost effective and efficiency method in cleaning raw edible bird’s nest is necessary as market demand of edible bird’s nest increased. A set of questionnaire subjected to household consumers, and small bird’s nests companies. Micro-bubbles and shaking techniques used together in the final design of the machine. Prototype of the machine is fabricated in price below the target design. Machine validation is undergo by 3 subjects from survey respondents to compare the different in time consumed and weight loss of edible bird’s nest after using 2 different methods which is conventional method and using prototype machine. Results show there is obvious improvement. The time consumed by using the prototype machine to clean had reduced 45.52% in average compared to conventional method. The weight loss after cleaning by using prototype machine also reduced 18.16% in average. Lastly, efficiency and portable oriented EBN cleaning machine is fabricated with material cost of RM720.