Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Abstract:
With the increasing population of Nigeria comes an increase also in the number of households, schools, hospitals, religious worship centers, commercial and industrial complexes, etc., all needing devices to remove waste and keep their immediate environment clean. Although, a variety of cleaning devices and equipment are available, Nigerians have shown increasing preference for the brooms made locally from palm frond petioles. Hence the demand for traditionally made brooms is huge and not readily met and therefore emphasizing the need to design a mechanized system for broom production. Thus, a machine for the stripping of palm frond petioles for local broom production in Nigeria was designed, fabricated and tested. The fabricated prototype consists mainly of a cylindrical drum, a vee holed spring loaded stripping knife, a flywheel, a geared electric motor and belts. The machine is loaded with four (4) petioles manually at a time during operation. The results showed that the machine can strip the petioles in 3 seconds as compared with 27 seconds when it is undertaken manually. With this machine, it is hoped that the demand for local brooms would be met, and the business of broom production would become more profitable to those involved.

Keywords: Keywords: petioles, broom, palm fronds, knife assembly, cleanliness

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