Experimental Study of a Method for Mechanical Shrimp Heading
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Abstract:
Manual shrimp heading is labor intensive, has low efficiency, and results in a susceptibility of shrimp meat to bacterial contamination. On the other hand, mechanical heading of a shrimp using a guillotine results in a significant waste of shrimp meat. Therefore, this study developed an approach for shrimp heading by double elastic cylinder extrusion. A theoretical analysis and an extrusion experiment were carried out simultaneously. The extrusion process for removing shrimp head can be divided into two phases. In the first phase, a movable elastic cylinder is automatically guided to the weak parts connecting the head and body of the shrimp and is extruded preliminarily. In the second phase, the movable elastic cylinder moves along the side surfaces of a fixed cylinder, further separating the head and body. In this way, the shrimp head is completely separated from the body with negligible loss of the shrimp meat. In the experiment, optimal shrimp heading was achieved at a downward speed (v) of 10 mm/s, an offset distance (e) of 1.29 mm, and a reserve distance (H) of 0 mm for the movable elastic cylinder. Compared with using a guillotine, the double elastic cylinder extrusion for shrimp heading improved the yield of shrimp meat by 11.13%. Therefore, double elastic cylinder extrusion can serve as a basis for the development of shrimp heading devices.
