Bagasse Shredding Machine for Growing of Mushroom

Abstract

Bagasse is a residue that is suitable for using as a mushroom cultivating material instead of using the rubber wood sawdust. The bagasse has necessary nutrients for mushroom growing. Using bagasse as the cultivating material, it must be shredded finely like the rubber wood sawdust. Therefore, this research has created and tested the bagasse shredding machine for growing mushroom. The bagasse was shredded through the steel grate size 6, 8, and 12 mm, respectively. It was found that shredding the bagasse with the speed of 3,625 rpm., using the steel grate size 12 mm., could gain the highest amount of bagasse at 86%. In the experiment of cultivating mushroom, the bagasse and rubber wood sawdust were used with ratio 20:80, 40:60, 60:40, 80:20 and 100:0, respectively. The results showed that the optimum ratio is 60:40 with the bagasse shredded by 6 mm. size steel grate. This ratio got the highest profit at 2.34 baht/bag, and the size of shredded bagasse was effected on growing mushroom. It was concluded that using the bagasse as a cultivating material could gain the profits indifferently from using only the rubber wood sawdust. Thus, this shredding machine is suitable for shredding the bagasse that was used as a cultivating material for growing mushroom instead of using the rubber wood sawdust.