Impact of Different Oil Extraction Techniques on the Physicochemical Properties of Seed.

The seeds of baobab were found to have both industrial and domestic uses due to their essential oil qualities for topical medication. However, the seeds found in this study area in Ghana are underutilised and sometimes thrown away after being taken off the pulp. The present study is aimed at examining the impact of the two predominant techniques used for oil extraction from nonoily seeds, namely, mechanical extraction and Soxhlet (n-hexane) extraction, on both the oil yield and physicochemical properties of crude oil derived from baobab seeds.

Optimal evaluation of crop residues for gasification in Ghana using integrated multi-criterial decision making techniques.

Lack of sustainable feedstock quantity and quality has been reported to be one of the major challenges confronting operations of gasifier plants in Ghana. In this paper, TOPSIS (Technique for order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) COPRAS (Complex Proportional Assessment) and VIKOR (Multi-criteria Optimisation and Compromise Solution) were used to select optimal crop residues for sustainable gasification in Ghana among thirteen residue types. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used as weighting criteria for the three Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques.

Drying Kinetics and Chemical Properties of Mango.

Four mango fruit varieties of average slice thickness 0.6 cm and slice area 10 cm were dried using a mechanical dryer at varied temperatures, 55°C, 65°C, and 75°C. In general, the moisture content (MC) for all samples analyzed decreased with increasing drying time.

Attainable regions and fuzzy multi-criteria decisions: Modeling a novel configuration of methane bioreactor using experimental limits of operation.

This study sets out to develop an approach that couples attainable regions and fuzzy multicriteria decision methods for modeling optimal configurations of multistage digesters without using a kinetic model of the process. The approach is based on geometric analysis of methane curves as their shapes contain valuable insight into substrate biodegradability characteristics during anaerobic digestion. With the case study of abattoir waste, the results indicate that the optimal batch operation policy involves four anaerobic sequencing batch reactors operated in series with fresh feed being added at the second and the four stages (fed-batch systems).

Simulation of two-dimensional attainable regions and its application to model digester structures for maximum stability of anaerobic treatment process.

Unlike high-rate anaerobic digesters that employ some mechanism to retain microbial sludge mass, low-rate systems use sufficiently long hydraulic retention times to ensure process stability, which becomes economically unattractive for treating large quantities of waste. This study presents the use of attainable region to develop a new strategy to enhance the stability of low-rate digesters. By considering three digestion cases, diary manure only (batch 1) or diary manure with granular (batch 2) or lagoon (batch) sludge as innoculum, the following findings were obtained.

Technical and Socioeconomic Potential of Biogas from Cassava Waste in Ghana.

This study analyses technical potential and ex ante socioeconomic impacts of biogas production using cassava waste from agroprocessing plants. An analysis was performed for two biodigesters in two cassava processing communities in Ghana. The results showed that the two communities generate an excess of 4,500 tonnes of cassava peels per year.