A New Approach to Integrating Renewable Energies in the Design of a Shea Kernel Solar Mill

Abstract

The development of the agri-food sector in West African countries is limited by energy and technological factors. As a result, the main shea nut producers in these countries, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Mali, export their production to the benefit of large industries in northern countries. One of the most difficult operations involved in transforming shea nuts into shea butter is grinding. Processing shea kernels into shea butter requires a mill or grinder. The types of energy (diesel and electricity) used by these mills are fossil-based, difficult to access and pose huge environmental issues. The objective of this work is to design a mill, operating with photovoltaic solar energy as an energy source, in a design approach using design rules and industrial engineering tools. To this end, a survey on the practices of the networks of agri-food equipment stakeholders on the use of renewable energy and the characterization of the network of solar mill stakeholders were carried out. The results of the surveys and the network characterization of the stakeholders, combined with those of the literature review, made it possible to define rules for integrating renewable energy into the design of the solar mill. The use of functional analysis and a tool to help choose energy-efficient technological solutions enabled to apply the rules for integrating renewable energy into the design of the shea kernel solar mill for validation purpose. The results of the functional tests of the solar mill showed a production capacity of 270 Kg of shea kernel paste, a solar energy consumption of 11,532 kWh equivalent to an energy consumption of 1.82 USD in 6 hours operational time per day.