Design and Optimisation of Shea Butter Mixer

A shea butter mixer was designed, fabricated and tested.  The machine mixed milled shea paste with water and extract shea butter oil from the paste. Its major component parts included mixing blade, mixing tank, gear system, diesel engine and burner.  The machine capacity was 56 kg per hour. The results of testing of the machine revealed that the yield of oil ranged between 26.52 % and 39.43 %. The highest oil yield of 39.43 % was obtained from interaction between container diameter of 50 cm, blade type 5 numbers and speed of 110 rpm, while the least oil yield of 26.52 % was obtained from interaction between container diameter of 33.2 cm, blade type of 3 numbers and speed of 110 rpm. The blade type, container diameter and speed of mixing were found to have significant effects on yield of the shea butter. The development of this mixer would have a positive economic impact on the local processors. The mixer would improve oil extraction and increase the product throughput for the local investors Keywords: shea butter, mixer, blade, yiel

Design and Fabrication of Shea Nut Steam Roaster

Sheanut (Butyrospernum paradoxum) is an oil rich tropical tree crop, which is indigenous to the West African savannah zone. In Nigeria, most of the shea nut roasters are made of light mild steel materials with openings. The source of heat for the roasting is open fire. This takes time and the mild steel can easily get rusted and contaminate the product. In addition, open fire roasting has the disadvantage of producing burnt crushed kernels which in turn lead to black shea oil formation, loss of vital and essential nutrients.  A shea nut roaster which makes use of steam as source of heat energy was designed and fabricated to be used in roasting shea nut prior to extracting oil from them. It was developed to address the aforementioned problems. The equipment consists of heating unit, roasting unit, power transmission unit and the supporting frame. A gear motor of 0.25kW was selected to supply power to the shaft whose end was welded to the stirrer. The roasting unit consists of three compartments: roasting chamber, steam chamber and insulator chamber. The heating unit has two pipes: water inlet pipe and steam delivery pipe. Also, charcoal burner was attached to the heating unit to help boil the water for steam to form; this steam will then be transported by the steam delivery pipe to the steam chamber which in turn heats up the outer surface of the roasting chamber and thus the crushed nuts inside are roasted through the heat being supplied. The machine was fabricated with about 90% local materials. Test results of the roaster using shea nuts indicate successful heating/roasting, the nuts were not scorched or burnt, rather they were looking dry but fresh, this indicates that the design of the machine suits its purpose for roasting shea nuts prior to oil expelling . Also, roasting capacity of 45kg/hr was achieved. The successful development of this machine will reduce drudgery and time taken associated with the traditional method of roasting shea nuts and therefore will increase productivity and utilization. Keywords: Heating, steam; shea nut; roaster; desig

Reviews in Automobile Brake Pads Production and Prospects of Agro Base Composites of Cashew Nut Shells and Nigerian Gum Arabic Binder.

The reviews of automobile brake pad production processes, formulations, materials, and properties revealed most works attempt mainly on replacing asbestos found to be carcinogenic with base materials with other ingredients in various formulations and particle sizes. The overview of these trends suggests the need to replace not only the asbestos but also the commonly used epoxy resins or phenolic resins or phenol formaldehyde binders that has been found to corrode outside plates of brake assembly. Therefore, this paper thrust a new research direction of replacing the asbestos and inorganic resins with agro based materials of Cashew Nut Shell and Plant Gum binder respectively to obtain a substantially green based brake pads that are non-injurious to human health and does not corrode any parts of the brake pads assembly. Taguchi design of experimental method was deployed to formulate twenty seven (27) different formulations with the help of Minitab Software approach. The particle size of the compositions was 300µm and the produced composites have favourable properties such as BHN, Compressive Strength, coefficient of friction, wear rate and very high ash content retention suggesting good thermal capacity of the brake pads. The values obtained respectively are 76.66BHN,12.187N/mm2, 0.4848, 1.16mg/m and 97.71%