THE USE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY TO PRODUCE AIR BLOWER IN CHARCOAL FURNACE FOR ALUMINUM RECYCLING

Abstract

: The charcoal-fired furnace is typically used in local recycling enterprises to produce cooking utensils from recycled Aluminum. Nearly all local foundries in Nigeria use manually run blowers to supply air for charcoal combustion and to melt metals. This has demonstrated how many man-hours are needed to operate the blower. This becomes difficult with low enterprise's productivity. In order to boost production, it is vital to discover simpler means of providing the energy needed for combustion. This study involves designing and building a solar-powered blower. To achieve this goal, measurements of amount of charcoal for melting of Aluminum and Zinc with their related melting times were made. Manual air blowers and those driven by solar energy have similar principle of operation. According to performance data from the manually operated air blower, melting 5kg of Aluminum and 5kg of Zinc takes about 69 minutes and 44 minutes on average, respectively. On the other hand, melting 5kg of Aluminum and 5kg of Zinc takes the solar-powered blower about 31 minutes and 18 minutes, respectively. The solar-enabled air blower melts quicker than the manually operated air blower. It was also discovered that the Solar-enabled air blower also avoids challenging task of providing energy for melting and lowers cost of melting.