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

Abstract:
This work considered a comparative determination of starch and hydrogen cyanide (HCN) content from a locally manufactured garri. The manual and mechanical method of dewatering (pressing) was used. The percentage of starch released from both methods decreased with time. At 30 minutes, the percentage of starch for manual pressing was 5.45% while that from mechanical pressing was 7.70%. At 150 minutes, the amount of starch from manually pressed garri was 2.30% and that from mechanically pressed garri was 1.75%. Mechanical presser removed more HCN than manual presser at all time intervals. At 30 minutes and 150 minutes, the percentage of HCN from mechanical and manual pressing were 0.064, 0.046 and 0.053,0.031% respectively. The temperature of curing for both methods was approximately 900C, at 25 minutes. The significant of this research is to investigate a better method of processing garri with less amount of HCN. Hydrogen cyanide is injurious to human health because it is carcinogenic. This study revealed that mechanical pressing brought a significant reduction of HCN than manual pressing.

Keywords: Starch, cyanides, garri, fermentation, dewatering, cure/vulcanized, frying.

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