Food serves as one of the requirements for the survival of every living being. It exists in various forms and one of this is Groundnut. Groundnut (Arachis hypogea), apart from being considered for food, creates jobs and sources of income for the teeming populace and contributes to GDP of the countries where grown; its contributions to the national growth increase when its production is mechanized. However, in spite of the use of mechanized method of farming, the contributions are still low in developing countries, compared to the developed countries. Some of the factors responsible for this center on the fact that the available machineries are for turkey projects, which are expensive and as such they are viewed irrelevant among the small scale stakeholders in the developing nations, based on the quantity of their produce. In order to find solution to some of these challenges, the present study utilizes the characteristics of both nuts and shells of groundnuts to develop and evaluate the performance of a 20 kg/h groundnut shelling machine. The machine comprises five basic units, namely: the hopper, neck, shelling unit, power transmission unit and frame. The developed machine with a theoretically loading capacity of 2.5 kg/batch, required average of 58.02 minutes to shell the rated capacity to attain shelling efficiency of 80.39 % with loss of 3.125 % due to crushing. Findings show that the minimum productivity of the machine is 20.666 kg/hr, which improves as the moisture content of the feedstock reduces.

Due to increased global warming and pollution, the use of biodiesel as alternative to biodiesel has become a widespread. The use of Mustard (Brassica juncea L.) oil as a possible feedstock for biodiesel production was evaluated. The biodiesel was produced through transesterification with sodium hydroxide and gave a biodiesel yield of 94 wt.%. The fatty acid profile obtained by chromatography analyzer was mainly erucic acid 45.7 wt.%, linoleic acid 14.2 wt.% and linolenic acid 13.0 wt.% acids. The distillation characteristics show higher distillation temperature than diesel and the mineral elements in the oil and biodiesel are within the ASTM limits for biodiesel. The oil and biodiesel were characterized and they gave properties that are similar to those of fossil diesel and within the ASTM D6751 and EN 14214 limits for biodiesel, which led to the conclusion that mustard seeds can be a viable source of feedstock for biodiesel production. The glycerin analysis shows the completeness of the transesterification process.

A fixed bed batch-type bioreactor for pyrolyzing used or discarded plastic wastes was developed and its performance was evaluated. This research explored the option of converting the high-density polyethylene (HDPE) category of plastic wastes into useful bio-oil in the developed pyrolysis fixed-bed batch reactor. The developed 5 kg batch-type pyrolysis system powered by liquified petroleum gas (LPG) was designed and simulated with SolidWorks computer software to confirm its functionality, fabricated with locally sourced materials, and evaluated with HDPE plastic wastes sorted from dumpsites within the Akure metropolis. The developed reactor evaluation result justified that the pyrolysis reactor has the potential to produce 1.4575 kg of bio-oil per kilogram of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) consumed. The pyrolytic oil obtained at pyrolysis temperature between 280oC-520oC in this work was thereafter assayed for its composition and fuel properties analyses. The results of the characterization indicated that the pyrolysis of plastic HDPE wastes is a good source of alternative fuel as it shows proximity to the physiochemical characteristics of conventional diesel.

The study was conducted to investigate the causes, effects and controls of Boiler rupture in Egbin Steam. Thermal power plant, Lagos State. Three classes of boiler rupture were investigated for twenty-nine cases of boiler rupture. The cases were grouped into classes through stratified sampling technique. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 95% level of significance was used to test the two research questions set for the study. The results of the study indicate that the various classes of boiler rupture are not equally significant, one class more prevalent and responsible for incessant forced power outages than the others. With respect to tube failure, the findings indicate that each of the various factors responsible is uniformly significant. Recommendations for proper maintenance planning, in order to prevent boiler rupture which could lead to forced power outage, were made. The effects of boiler rupture include reduction in load factor, plant utilization factor, profit, plant generation factor, plant efficiency and increase in down time, operation and maintenance costs.

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