Proximate and organoleptic characteristics of sun and solar dried fish

The sun and solar drier were evaluated for their drying effectiveness with three species of freshwater fish; Gymnarchus niloticus, Heterotis niloticus and Clarias gariepinus. The highest mean temperature that could be attained in the solar dryer was 700C at time 14.00 hour while the ambent temperature and insulation were 33.5 i 0C and 857.6 w/m2 respectively. Proximate and organoleptic characteristics of the sun and solar dried products were carried out. It was found out that quality of the fish products dried in the solar drier were superior to those sun-dried. Organoleptic characteristics of the solar dried were better, especially the odour and moisture reduction was more in solar than in sun dried products. It took only three days for the fish to be completely dried in the solar drier compared with sun dried fish products which took seven days to dry

Biodigestion of cassava peels blended with pig dung for methane generation

Biogas production from cassava (Manihot esculentus) peels and pig dung under a mesophilic temperature condition was investigated. Three blends of the wastes and a control labeled as B1, B2, B3 and C representing blend 1 (50:50 peel/dung), blend 2 (30:70 peel/dung), blend 3 (10:90 peel/dung) and control (pig dung alone) were used, respectively. Biodigestion of the wastes blends and control was carried out simultaneously under the same environmental and operational conditions of 30 days retention period using four metallic biodigesters of 32 L capacity each. The biogas yield result shows that blend 2 yielded the highest cumulative biogas of 78.5 L, while the least yield of 61.7 L was obtained by blend 3. When compared with the control set up and biodigestion of cassava waste alone from literature, there was blending effect resulting in increase in yield of biogas over the sole digestion of cassava peel or pig dung. Methane production leading to the combustibility of the biogas started at 6th, 5th, 5th and 4th days for B1, B2, B3 and C, respectively. This, in agreement with earlier studies show that better handling of cassava peels for energy production would be achieved by blending it with animal wastes in the right proportion.Keywords: Cassava peel, biogas, co-digestion, anaerobic digestion, wastes blends, lag daysAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(40), pp. 5956-596