The concern on how food and livestock waste should be managed and recycled has greatly increased in the world. This research investigated the anaerobic decomposition (digestion) process for biogas production on dairy cattle manure (CM) and food waste (FW) using a bacteria as inoculum - Pseudomonas aeruginosa. CM and FW were co-digested with bacteria (P. aeruginosa) as the substrate. FW was allowed to decompose separately without inoculum for 30 days. Digesters (Bioreactor) were prepared in five places to monitor the maximum biogas production, generation rate of methane and number of days for the production of biogas. 1 to ratio 5ml and 10ml of FW were codigested with P. aeruginosa (bacteria) in 2 proportion and also Cow manure with 1 to ratio 1 and 0.5ml in 2 proportions [ 1:5ml; 1:10ml and 1:1; 1:5ml]. Batch process operation was used under mesophilic condition (35⁰C) for the digesters/bioreactor. Production of biogas was notices on the third and fourth day after commencement for the digesters with cattle manure, fourth to fifth day for the digester (bioreactor) with bacteria and third day for the digester with only FW. FW and CM generated highest cumulative biogas with volume of 88.5g/kg.

Optimization of neem oil extraction using Central Composite Design (CCD) was evaluated in this research. The effects of two factors: sample weight and extraction duration on the response which is neem oil volume extracted, were investigated. The CCD employed resulted in 13 experimental runs. Extraction was carried out in a 250 ml Soxhlet extractor. Hexane was used as solvent with thermostated heating mantle at temperature 60°C. Results obtained shows the optimized values of 54.69% of neem oil was obtained with 25 g weight of sample with extraction time of 12hours. The r2 and r2adj values were close to 1 which indicates that the regression model was a good one.

This study involves the extraction of oil from three sources: orange peel, guava leaves, and cassia fistula leaves using Soxhlet apparatus. The variables considered in this study were time of extraction and sample weight. Minitab statistical software was used to randomize the runs. The combination of operating parameters that gave the optimum yield for the three sources were identified. The regression equation for each source was reported. The coefficient of determination (R2) value for orange, guava leaves and cassia fistula extract were 99.51%, 99.90%, and 99.77% respectively. This shows that the model is a good prediction tool for extraction of oil from these sources. Based on the R2 values guava leaves (99.90%) gave the highest prediction accuracy followed by Cassia fistula (99.90%), with orange leaves having the lowest R2 value (99.77%) among the three sources considered.

Fermented African locust bean seeds can be used as substitute to chemically based food spices. It improves sensory properties of foods which includes the organoleptic characteristics. P. biglobosa (African locust bean) seeds were processed and fermented to a vegetable protein based African condiment known as ‘Iru’. Fermentation process was carried out at four different temperatures which are 40, 50, 60 and 70°C. The monitoring of the fermentation rate was based on three parameters namely: Carbon dioxide production, pH and reduction in substrate weight. Substrates were inoculated with Bacillus subtilis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae as starter culture while fermentation process took place for the duration of five days under anaerobic condition. The result obtained from the pH of fermented seeds confirmed the fermentation process to be alkaline in nature.

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