ABSTRACT An evaporative cooling system was developed with locally available materials. The system was aimed at providing lower temperature and higher relative humidity necessary for extending the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. The performance of the cooler was evaluated in terms of temperature drop, humidity gain, cooling efficiency and quality assessment of the stored products. Two categories of test were carried out on the cooler with the chosen absorbent materials: the no-load test a...
ABSTRACT An indirect, natural convection solar-assisted charcoal smoking system was designed and fabricated in one of the host communities of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri where most of the fish farmers and processors adopt the conventional method of drying fishes, that is, using firewood. This method which works well during the dry period of the year is very inconvenient during the rainy season. Given the excessive heat generated by firewood and its resultant effect on the...
Abstract Consumers’ complaints of estimated bills from the Utility have risen to an alarming extent in recent years. On the other hand, Utility incurs huge losses attributing it to electric energy consumption theft among consumers. These complaints by the utility and the consumer led to the quest for a system that in addition to recording energy consumption data, will be able to compute and report the data to the Utility remotely. This work proposes the implementation of smart meter which...
ABSTRACT This project work covers the design and construction of a robotic arm mechanically capable of 5 Degrees of Freedom. It solves the problem of automatically detecting and picking up objects placed within distances of 10-30cm round the robot base platform. It does this by using a simplified forward and inverse kinematic relation modeled in two dimensional robot workspace. The work does not cover the more general case, of an n-linked (n>2) robotic arm working within a three dimensional...
ABSTRACT This project presents a 40A maximum power point tracking solar charge controller. The MPPT charge controller tries to keep the voltage and the power stable. The MPPT charge controller will harvest more power from the solar array – it will adjust its input voltage to harvest the maximum power from the solar array and then transform this power to supply the varying voltage requirement of the battery plus load. An MPPT charge controller is an electronic DC to DC converter that optimi...
Abstract Safety is crucial in oil and gas industries, it is normal practice to collect incident reports daily. The volume of such reports is always very huge, as a result, the interpretation poses a great challenge. Consequently, there is an urgent need for techniques that can intelligently assist in transforming such vast amount of data into useful information and knowledge. Data mining is part of the knowledge discovery process that offers ways of extracting non-trivial, previously unknow...
ABSTRACT The problem of epileptic power supply and its consequences in the developing countries is a generally known issue. Worst still, the hope that it will be addressed with the deregulation of electricity Industries in recent time are being dashed by flight to top class investors due to its poor implementation. There is a need to provide multiple sources of power and automatic mechanisms for switching from one source to another. This is achieved in this work where quadruple power supp...
ABSTRACT Comparative economic analysis of the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) and the use of AGO for power generation was presented. The data for costs of constructing and running CNG-powered vehicles were obtained for the study. Separate economic analyses of running the CNG-powered vehicles and running AGO vehicles were performed. The initial capital cost for CNG project amounted to N4.31 million and that for diesel was N3.60 million while the annual operating cost for CNG is N1.47 mill...
ABSTRACT A comparative analysis of renewable energy sources for power generation in Nigeria is presented. The three renewable energy resources of solar radiation, wind energy and hydro power were investigated for six locations (Northwest, Northeasth, North-central, Southwest, Southeast and South-south) representing the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. The Hargreaves and Samani model was used to investigate the solar energy potential of the study locations of Sokoto, Maiduguri, Makurdi, Ib...
ABSTRACT The study compared and predicted the remediation rates of microbes using the rate removal of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Content (TPHC) of a crude oil polluted land. This was done using field experimental data generated from the soil of the Federal University of Technology Owerri Research Farm in Imo State, Nigeria. The soil was artificially polluted in the laboratory with crude oil - Bonny light - with specific gravity of 0.8323. Petroleum contaminant present in the soil was ...
ABSTRACT Flow assurance is the efficient and successful flow of fluids in pipes. Some of the flow assurance challenges that can be encountered include hydrate formation, which is prevalent offshore, sand deposition, wax precipitation, scale deposits, or emulsion problems. In onshore production facilities in the Niger delta, wax deposition is the major challenge to efficient fluid flow. Consequently, it has been the focus of research to proffer effective predictive control measures to a probl...
ABSTRACT This research work presents buckling and vibration analyses of line continuum using 6 x 6 stiffness matrices. The study used six term Taylor McLaurin’s polynomial series shape function and the stiffness matrices were developed using energy variational principle. Two deformable nodes were considered at the centre of the continuum which brings the number of deformable nodes to six. The six term Taylor McLaurin’s shape function was substituted into strain energy equation and the r...
ABSTRACT With the ever increasing need to optimize production, the accurate understanding of the mechanics of multi-phase flow and its effect on the pressure drop along the oil-well flow string is becoming more pertinent. The efficient design of gas-lift pump, electric submersible pumps, separators, flow strings and other production equipment depends on the accurate prediction of the pressure drop along the flow pipe. Pressure is the energy of the reservoir/well and it is crucial to understa...
ABSTRACT This research focuses on the design of a robust but flexible prodigiosin eluting stent coating for possible coronary cardiovascular implant. When coated with the drug embedded polymer matrix, the stent would be expected to dilate the vessel around the fatty blockages while the drug eluting polymer membrane delivers anti-proliferative drugs over a period of time to prevent the restenosis that otherwise would occur. The goal of this work is to incorporate anti-cancerous drug prodigios...
ABSTRACT The thermal–hydraulics and neutronics parameters of GHARR-1 control systems were assessed for its reliability after 18 years of operation using the Micro-Computer Closed Loop System (MCCLS) and original Control Console (CC). The MCCLS and some components that control the sensitivity and the reading mechanism of the meters on the control systems have been replaced with new ones over the years, due to ageing, repairs and obsolescence. The results show that when reactor is operated a...