Technological Feats Of Agricultural Engineers In Nigeria (III)

M.K Othman (PhD)

— Feb 19, 2016 5:28 am | Leave a comment

Dryers And Solar Cookers

Weeding operation is one of the most tedious compared to other farm operations. This is why weeding is unattractive to many people especially the youths because of drudgery. Agricultural Engineers have made tremendous effort in developing animal drawn mechanical weeders. Two examples are suffice; IAR Animal Drawn Straddle Row Weeder and EMCOT Rotary Weeder with capacities of weeding a quarter of hectare per hour each. Obviously, the target of this weeding technology is for small and medium scale farmers who constitute more than 80 percent of the farming population.

Harvesting is the proceeding operation after weeding. Harvesting of farm produce is equally important and tedious when done manually. Inefficient and untimely harvest can result to produce loss to as much as 30 to 45 percent. Harvesting is a high labour operation because of the need to do it timely. The development of crop harvesters has brought about a remarkable reduction in the drudgery, labour requirement and production cost of crops. In Nigeria, Agricultural Engineers have developed harvesters for all crops; cereal, legumes, fruits and tubers, respectively.  Examples of this feat are scattered in some Universities, Polytechnics, Research centres and few local fabricators across the nation. In Federal University of Technology, Akure, Prof. R. O. Akinbamowo and his colleagues designed and fabricated a tractor – mounted harvester for cocoyam using locally available materials. Field tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of the machine. The overall performance of the machine was the successful harvesting of masses of tubers with negligible numbers of tuber damages. Akinbamowo’s was published by Australian Journal of Agricultural Engineering of 2011 (vol. 2 no. 3). Another outstanding work was that of Dr. A. O. Ojomo, M. O. Ale and O. G. Olajide of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic Owo, who developed a cowpea harvester. The harvester was designed, constructed and evaluated for its performance. The machine was fabricated with high carbon steel with an output capacity of 120kg/h. The overall performance of the harvester exhibited the highest functional efficiency of 93.75 percent; quality performance efficiency of 81.21 percent; field loss of 3.4 percent and shattered loss of 6.66 percent. The harvester was found to be statically and dynamically stable and thus was able to withstand vibration. This innovation was similarly published in Vol. 5 no. 10 of Asian Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Engineering is a global profession, solutions are globally sought to address local problems. Thus, the solution to harvesting of oil palm fruits was sought from Germany-based manufacturers, C. Woermann Nig. Limited who used the relevant engineering and agronomic data of oil palms for the successful development of an adjustable harvester for mechanised harvesting of Palm Oil in Nigeria. The problem of palm oil harvesting is enormous and is best captured by Mr Samuel Fadare, a researcher at Self-Help and Rural Development Association (SHERDA), Niger Delta, Nigeria. He stated “I was involved in carrying out PIND’s palm oil scoping study, and we discovered that one of the major constraints of oil palm industry in Nigeria is harvesting of palm trees’ fresh-fruit bunches (FFB). 50 percent of FFB are wasted for want of climbers and the cost involved. That’s why this technology is important, because it can reduce the drudgery involved in harvesting. Presently, all our processing and milling equipment are underutilised because of the tough period; right now, the mills are at 40 percent in-store capacity. It’s not that we don’t have FFB, but getting them harvested quickly and processed and in store is a problem”. This is why the introduction of oil palm harvester received tremendous applause from the stakeholders. The demonstration of the Nigerian initiative, German manufactured harvester was done at the National Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) in Benin City, Edo State, on January 28th, 2014. The occasion  saw the result of the linkages between Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), German agro-technology firm and palm oil sector stakeholders to improve the efficiency of not just harvesting of palm fruits, but of the palm oil sector as a whole. The event was witnessed by 187 participants from various stakeholders.

Threshing operation is followed after harvest. There are several threshers of most of agricultural crops produced in all the Agro-geological zones of Nigeria. These threshers are designed and fabricated by Agricultural Engineers for the use of Nigerian farmers and elsewhere. The most recent feat in threshing technology is achieved by Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) based in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The breakthrough of IAR is the transformation of its complex and low capacity Multi-Crop Thresher to simple, robust, efficient and high capacity machine. The new prototype machine, specifically designed to thresh sorghum, millet and soybean can also shell maize making it more versatile and cost effective for farmers and hire service operators. The machine performance in terms of output capacity, threshing and cleaning efficiencies are 410 kg/h, 99.6 percent and 98.4 percent for sorghum; 472 kg/h, 99.3 percent and 94.9 percent for millet; 200 kg/h, 100 percent and 89 percent for soybean, respectively. This machine is unique when compared with other available machines that can only thresh effectively one or maximum of two crops with lots of grain damage and waste. The losses due to visible grain damage and scatter loss for this machine are three percent and 4.2 percent for sorghum; 0.01 percent and 10.5 percent for millet; 0.01 percent and 4.2 percent for soybean, respectively. Development is still ongoing to improve the machine performance and also include other crops such as wheat and rice.

One can continue to mention innovations and breakthroughs achieved by Agricultural Engineers in the last four decades without exhausting them. However, there are few other technologies developed by Agricultural Engineers which are equally important to humanity that need to be mentioned in this article. One of them is manually operated Duplex Piston Pump developed by Engr Mansir Abubakar of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. A manually operated duplex piston pump has been constructed from locally available materials.

The pump is operated by a single individual and could discharge up to 20 litres/minute of water from a suction head of up to 2.5m to a delivery head of 1.5 m. The pump is gear driven through a handle. The driven gear drives a crank mechanism that ensures that when one piston is sucking, the other delivers water. The two suction pipes from the cylinders are joined to a common pipe that goes to the Well. Similarly, the two delivery pipes are joined to a common delivery pipe for discharge.  Hence, there is a relatively smooth flow of water from the pumps as there is a continuous flow from each revolution of the lever. In its present state, the pump could be operated by a person above 15 years.  With little modification in the drive mechanism, it can be operated by children between the ages of eight to 15 years. There was equally another innovation developed by the same Engineer; Engr M. S Abubakar; it is “One-litre Squat Flush Toilet.”

This is a toilet that needs just about a litre of water to flush down the solid waste of an adult. A 60 litre water tank supported at an elevation ensures gravity flow of water through   a metering mechanism to a one litre container. It uses self weight of users to open or close a toilet –collecting mechanism. It is simply operated by pressing down a pedal with a leg (or two legs) when the user is in a squatting position.  The pressed pedals actuate a mechanism which opens a sealed inlet for the stool. After the user has finished easing himself, all he needs to do is to pull a rope which will deliver one liter of water over the stool down a slanted evacuation pipe. By lifting his leg from the pedal the user automatically releases the mechanism which will now close the sealed inlet for the stool, thereby blocking any odour coming from the evacuation pipe. The evacuation pipe is connected to longer pipes which empty their contents in the septic tank by gravity flow. The toilet is suitable for public uses where the distance from the toilet to the septic tank is not more than five metres.

These are few of the achievements recorded and it is evident that Nigeria is blessed with human resources. Most of these achievements were made by young engineers, some of them as trainees or “baby engineers”. I have deliberately refused to mention the feats achieved by our well experienced engineers; “grandfather” engineers such as Profs. Makanjola, Odigbo, Lasisi, Lucas, Igbeka, Oni, Talabi, Faborode, Adewumi, Abubakar, Ajayi, Adekoya, Drs. Bindir, Musa, Engr Azogu and many others too numerous to mention. These are engineers of international repute and thank God, they are still alive; perhaps retired but not tired. The question is “despite these achievements, significant numbes of Nigerians are not aware of these achievements and very few users are accessible to such technologies, why?” The answer to this question can be searched by the stakeholders with the active facilitation of our honourable ministers of Agriculture, Science and Technology and Water Resources. For us to benefit from the mantra of change, it is important to create effective linkage between innovators and users. Honourable ministers, the balls are in your courts.