ABSTRACT Energy and exergy analysis was conducted for a vegetable oil refinery in the Southwest of Nigeria. The plant, powered by two boilers and a 500 kVA generator, refines 100 tonnes of crude palm kernel oil (CPKO) into edible vegetable oil per day. The production system consists of four main group operations: neutralizer, bleacher, filter, and deodorizer. The performance of the plant was evaluated by considering energy and exergy losses of each unit operation of the production process. Th...
ABSTRACT The importance of cereal gruel as a highly nutritious food for infants in many countries in Africa cannot be overstated. Conventional methods of producing these food-slurries prior to their consumption as food cannot meet up with the high demand for these gruels. This current work is targeted at developing various archetypal machines for the improvement of the production of these food slurries. Three prototype machines have been developed and discussed in this paper, namely, the suct...
ABSTRACT Heat conduction through conventional and interlocking building bricks with cavities was studied in this work. Heat transfer analysis was carried out using MATLAB® partial differential equation toolbox. Regular and staggered hole arrangements were studied. Results showed that four staggered holed interlocking bricks were effective in thermal resistance into the bricks and increasing the holes beyond four did not give any thermal resistance advantage. For the conventional bricks stag...
ABSTRACT In vitro gas production of four different browse plants (Azadirachta indica, Terminalia catappa, Mangifera indica and Vernonia amygdalina) was investigated under different extractions. The relationship between the forage composition parameters (dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, acid detergent fibre, neutral detergent fibre and acid detergent lignin), process parameters (extraction mode and incubation time), and volume of gas production were modelled with artificial neural ne...
ABSTRACT This study utilised positive Lyapunov exponents' criteria to develop chaos diagram on the parameters space of &dimensional harmonically excited vibration absorber control Duffing's Oscillator. Relevant simulations were effected by choice combination of constant step Runge-Kutta methods and Grahm Schmidt Orthogonal rules. Simulations of 4-dimensional hyper-chaotic models of modified Lorenz and R&ler were used for validation purposes. Lyapunov's spectrums were obtained at (197 x 307) m...
ABSTRACT This study investigated the characterisation of the dyamnic responses of 3 dimensional Lorenz md Rosler models by Lyapunov's exponents using popular but laborious to implement Grahm Schmidt orthogonal rules over wider range of models driven parameters. The study also verifies a new proposed model for the validation of Lyapunov's spectrum when the requisite matrix depends on position of the model attractor.
ABSTRACT This paper presents the description and thermodynamic analysis of a new hybrid system of solar powered water heater and adsorption ice maker. Mathematical models were generated based on heat transfer in the collector, heat and lpuass transfer within the adsorbent-adsorbate pair and the themodynamics of the adsorption process. The numerical models developed from finite difference transformation of the resulting equations were developed into a MATLAB computer code for easy implementat...
ABSTRACT Engineering materials, mostly steel, are heat treated under controlled sequence of heating and cooling to alter their physical and mechanical properties to meet desired engineering applications. In this study, the effect of heat treatment (annealing, normalising, hardening, and tempering) on the microstructure and some selected mechanical properties of NST 37-2 steel were studied. Sample of steel was purchased from local market and the spectrometry analysis was carried out. The stee...
Abstract This study investigated the corrosion resistance of plated and unplated steels useful as ornamentals in saline environment. Nickel plating of carbon steel was done in watts solution for 25minutes with a current density of 3 Adm-3 at 60o C. The nickel plated carbon steel was later gold plated for 20 minutes with a current density of 0.2 Adm-3 at 50o C . The plated and unplated carbon steels were immersed in saline environment for 360 hours. Weight loss was taken every 24 hours in orde...
ABSTRACT The four stroke reciprocating internal combustion engine has been used as a case study, being that commonly utilized in most automobiles. General properties of ceramics were discussed while exposure was given to some high performance ceramics. theoretical deduction and analysis were then carried out to show improved engine performance using ceramic components. The engine performance parameters considered are (i) power output (ii) mean effective pressure (iii) speed of engine rotation...
ABSTRACT This paper discusses the development of unique software for the design of various cam profiles for she plate cam operating a flat face follower. The method employed in this work is that of generating geometrical cam coordinates using standard cam motions, thereby avoiding the problem of undercutting resulting from graphical layout methods for similar cam and follower types. Determination of critical designs output parameters were carried out by the developed software computational a...
AbstractRheological properties of food are very important indicators of the quality and texture of food products. In this study, the relative viscosity and pasting characteristics (cold and hot paste viscosity) of extrudates from a locally developed extruder (L/D 12:1, CR 4.4:1, 4 KW) were determined. The extrudates were processed from the flour and starch of cassava and maize and wheat flour. Stepwise regression and other follow up tests were employed to a factorial experiment in completely ...
Many studies are on-going to optimize the properties of composites, this is because composite have found application in different industries due to their advantage of light weight. Scientists have turned their attention to using natural occurring materials for the development of novel materials. Animal waste is playing an important part in this area of application as using it is not only providing benign environmental solution but solving engineering challenges. In this study, the effe...
ABSTRACT One of the most important resources of a nation is energy. The significance of energy definitely cannot be overemphasized as it is immensely utilized in our everyday activities as a very germane requirement for survival and robust lifestyle. The amount of energy availability and its usage in a country measures the level of industrialization. Several devices including machines, electronics, household electrical appliances and other domestic equipment and machines, industrial pro...
Abstract: Melon dehusking is often associated with lots of manual labour and stresses. In order to reduce the stress and boredom usually involved in manual dehusking of melon process, a melon dehusking and separation machine was designed, constructed and tested for operation as presented in this paper. The melon dehusking machine operates on the principle of attrition/friction as opposed to the use of an impact force in the dehusking chamber for shelling of melon seeds. This principle resu...