ABSTRACT An experimental study of the passive cooling of a building using longwave night sky radiation in Owerri, Nigeria is presented. The experimental rig consists of a standard (3.0 x 3.0 x 2.5m) room, flat plate sky radiator, heat exchanger, storage tank, water pump, interconnecting pipes and another standard room to act as control for the experiment. This test rig is a rectangular building made from 15.24cm hollow blocks. It has two windows located in the east and the south facing wa...
ABSTRACT Appraisal of industrial accidents and their effects on profitability are presented. Two manufacturing companies, The Nigerian Bottling company, Owerri, and the Nigerian Breweries, Aba were selected for the study which covered a period of three business years (2011–2013). Data collection was through administration of questionnaires and personal interviews of some strategic staff of the Companies. The data were analyzed using Mean Percentage Method. The results showed that th...
ABSTRACT This work investigated the variation of top loss heat transfer coefficient with the emittance of the absorber plate, the collector tilt angle and air gap spacing between the absorber plate and the cover plate. The effects of the emittance of the absorber plate, the collector tilt angle and air gap spacing between the plate and the cover on the collector performance were also considered. Data collected from the thermosyphon solar water heater constructed by the National Centre for En...
ABSTRACT When comparing with other manufacturing technologies, the extrusion technology always stands out as it is known to be highly efficient in terms of producing products of superior quality with the least possible amount of wastage. With the ever-increasing cost of materials, energy and the competition in the market, it becomes almost necessary to device a model with the minimum number of trials and shortest lead time. A multi-hole extrusion process was hence devised to serve the above n...
Wind energy is abundant, inexhaustible, affordable, environmentally preferable, and equally sustainable. More researches are emerging in the analysis of wind energy in Nigeria and each have proven that great potential exist for wind power generation in Nigeria but sufficient results is yet to be achieved in terms of application. The present research is intended to apply the technology of wind energy for pumping of water in rural Nigeria. To achieve this, a Savonius vertical axis wind turbine ...
The demand for EN8 mild steel in the industry is high due to its integral mechanical properties. However, conventional machining of EN8 mild steel is a challenging task. In this research work, prediction and optimization of EN8 mild steel Material Removal Rate (MRR) and Surface Roughness (Ra) using Response Surface Methodology (R.S. M) were investigated. The dimension of the EN8 mild steel material was 0.12 m diameter and 0.08 m in length. The turning operation of the ENS mild steel was carri...
Solar energy is the energy that is in sunlight. It has been used for thousands of years inmany different ways by people all over the world. As well as its traditional human usesin heating, cooking, and drying, it is used today to make electricity where other powersupplies are absent, such as in remote places and in space. It is becoming cheaper to makeelectricity from solar energy and in many situations it is now competitive with energyfrom coal or oil. A solar cooker can be used for cooking ...
In this paper, the design and fabrication of a Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottle recycling machine was undertaken. It was designed to wash a set of two (2) 75cl used PET bottles in 10 seconds. The washing, rinsing and sterilizing chambers were made of stainless steel. The rotational wash brushes were made of plastic bristles, and the machine runs on a single phase electric motor with a washing speed of 470 rpm. After fabrication and testing, results obtained showed a set of two (2) 75cl...
This research work is aimed at the performance evaluation of biomass briquette from elephant and spear grass in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria. The grasses were dried, pulverized and compressed by the briquetting machine to produce the briquettes. The performance evaluation shown that elephant and spear grass briquettes had a good compressive strength between 2.0N/mm2 and 1.2N/mm2; ash content (5.18% and 6.13%) and calorific values (15013.9KJ/Kg and 15990.0KJ/Kg) respectively. The briquettes ...
Post-harvest losses in developing countries have contributed to the unavailability of foodstuff. Estimation of these losses is generally cited to be of the order of 4% but under very adverse conditions, it is estimated as high as 100%. A significant percentage of these losses are related to improper and/or untimely preservation of foodstuffs. This research work is therefore aimed at developing a multipurpose solar dryer. The solar dryer consists mainly of solar collector and dryer chamber com...
Pure Pursuit Algorithm is a commonly used path-tracking algorithm that in autonomous driving applications determines the steering rate necessary for the vehicle to stay on track. The aim of the project is to set up a simulation of a moving UGV and experiment with different mathematical solutions to improve the existing technology, making it suitable for a wider spectrum of applications. The main result produced by this research is a Modified Follow the Carrot Algorithm capable of high accurac...
ABSTRACT The fabrication of the solar dryer was successful and test were carried out for various performance comparisons such as No-load and Load performance of the dryer and direct sun drying comparison and noticeable differences was noticed in the final moisture content such that the maximum temperature recorded in the drying chamber and solar collector for No-load are 44.5 and 52 respectively and also for when the cabinet is loaded the above stated temperatures are 66 and 76.5 for a highes...
This paper is focused on the performance analysis of locally design plastic crushing machine for domestic and industrial use in Nigeria. A plastic crushing machine designed and fabricated from locally sourced materials were used to crushed plastic materials mainly to reduced plastic wastes dumped across Nigeria cities. Performance analysis was carried out on the plastic crushing machine and the efficiency was calculated as 85.16% while the average machine through put capacity was determined a...
The objective of the experiment was to understand the practical application of strain gauge rosette and to determine principal strains and their direction using Mohr circle. Elastic constants of the specimen were evaluated using the values obtained from the experiment. The constants gotten from the experiment were compared with the standard elastic constants for steel. The comparison showed that the elastic constants evaluated from the experiment were very close to the standard ones. The smal...
The evaluation of cow dung and talinum triangulare (water leaf) as a seeding agent for the production of biogas from organic domestic wastes was conducted in Warri metropolis, Nigeria. The experiments were conducted within a period of thirty seven days in a steel bio-digester. The biogas produced was dried, purified and transferred into a commercially available 7.5Kg gas cylinder using a compressor. The results obtained showed that the domestic wastes seeded with cow-dung and talinum triangul...