The preservation of fresh produce can provide rural households with better diets all-year round and income by reducing their deterioration. Promotion of low-cost temporary storage technologies requires evidence of their effectiveness to attain conducive conditions. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of an evaporative charcoal cooler for the preservation of tomatoes and kales. The cooler microclimate and outdoor conditions were investigated by measuring the air temperature and relative humidity. During the study period, the maximum temperature difference between the cooler and the outdoors was found to be 9.2 °C while the maximum relative humidity difference was 36.8%. Due to the presence of light rain and, consequently, low solar radiation, the temperature and relative humidity differences were significantly reduced. Despite the light rain, the cooler still registered a maximum relative humidity of 83.5% and a maximum cooling efficiency of 91.5%. Overall, the cooler demonstrated promising results in terms of favourable microclimate conditions, the shelf-life and colour changes for tomatoes and kales.
In Kenya, threshing of common beans is mainly by traditional method using sticks and animal tramping, which are slow, inefficient and tedious. Consequently, there is a need to develop portable threshers locally available in the market for small and medium-scale farmers. The objective of this study was to simulate design variables effect on the performance of a common beans portable thresher. Sizing of design variables and parameters was key in development of bean thresher. This could be achieved by costly experiments or use of prediction mathematical model equation. The later method was used by developing mathematical models from combination of Buckingham pi theorem and reference to other similar work in literature. The predicting equation for power requirement, grain losses, grain damages, efficiency and throughput capacity were developed and validated using experimental thresher from the same study. The results showed that there was a positive correlation with R2 of 0.9. Based on actual data and 10% absolute residual error interval, the prediction performance of the developed models were above 77%. The results noted that increase in cylinder peripheral speed of the pegs resulted into increase in power requirement, bean grains damages, threshing efficiency and throughput capacity. Also increase in effective cylinder diameter caused increase in threshing efficiency and grain damages.
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