STUDIES ON PERFORMANCE OF RECENT TECHNIQUES ADOPTED IN VARIOUS STARCH AND SAGO INDUSTRIES

The Sago industries are traditional agro-based processing industry with huge employment potential in India. Tapioca roots are one of the richest sources of starch and it contains 30% of starch. The sago industries are extracted the starch from tapioca roots using conventional method and mechanical method. The recovery of starch from tapioca root is 16-18% by conventional method and 22-25% by mechanical method. The average loss of starch is only 5% while peeling the roots using mechanical peeler where as the starch loss is 10-15% in manual peeling. In mechanical process, the time required for extraction of starch from starch milk is 60 min where as the conventional method required the time for separation of starch from starch milk is 15 to 20 hours. From the analysis of drying system, it was found that the moisture is removed from 40 to 10% about 90-120 min at 50-60^oC using hot air dryer in drying of starch. Also found that the moisture is removed from 30 to 10% about 60 min at 30-35^oC using hot air dryer and about 90 min at 30-35^oC using poly sheet dryer in drying of sago.