Assessment of Electronic Fish Skinning Hand Device

Abstract

India occupies second place in fish production in the world.  Despite its importance and support to more than 14.5 million people directly or indirectly, the industry lacks good indigenous machinery for post-harvest operations. People are using ancient practices for descaling, cleaning, and other operations which is a time-consuming process and they are not confiscating fish skin due to various anthropogenic activities causing mechanical injury to the fish scales and gills. The unavailability of fish food and the blocking of the migration path is also destroying the fish breeding. The fish skinning hand device was tested at three levels of speed (5500, 6500, and 7500 rpm). The minimum skin removed 15g will take a time of 3 min 40 sec and the skin removed increased to 18g which took 4 min 12 sec were observed at the working speed of 5500 rpm, respectively. At inferior rpm, the number of stroke lengths was minimal and the skin removal was taking more time to remove skin since the amount of skin removed was reduced. The removal of fish skin was increased as the rpm was increased from 5500 to 6500.  The cost and return analysis on the operation of the fish skinning hand device revealed that it will have an annual net income of RS 23,642. a payback period of 20 days, and a rate of return of 4.72. The actual cost of designing and developing the fish skinning hand device was RS 5,000/-.