DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF ALOE VERA DISTILLER FROM MATERIALS AVAILABLE LOCALLY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The objective of this project is to design and fabricate a low cost aloe vera distiller capable of producing distillate that is pure and hygienic for domestic and commercial usage. The available ones are costly, fragile, and designed for laboratory test for the chemists. They are not purposely made for commercial production of aloe vera distillation. Hence, the need for this designed and fabricated distiller using locally sourced materials that will make it cheap, non fragile and serve the commercial purpose for making aloe vera distillate. The components of the distiller are: electric stove having heating element of 2070 W, voltage of 240 V and surface area of 67600mm2 with dissipated energy of 4,987KJ; the heating chamber made of aluminium which is cylindrical in shape with lid has a volume of 3,261,893.35mm3 ; the condenser was made to have a cuboid shape with capacity of 13.824x 10-3m3 holding water of 13.824Kg. The connecting pipe between the heating chamber and condenser is 28mm in diameter while the outlet pipe that conveys the condensate to the receiver is 29mm in diameter. The frame that serves as support to the whole system was made of an angle bar of 4mm mild steel. Selection of material used is based on both their physical and chemical properties. The heating chamber was heated till the steam produced reached 1200C and was channelled into the conveying tube for cooling through a rubber hose. This made the condensate to trickle out for collection at the protruded end of the conveying tube. The conveying tube passed through a water jacket container that acts as condenser for cooling the steam at room temperature of 250C for distillate to form. The distiller is able to produce an average of 159.7ml from approximately 300.4g of aloe vera in 45 minutes, and the developed distiller has an effective performance of 98.7%. Once the aloe vera is heated for about 10 minutes, the continuous cooling of the condensate start trickles down which lasted 45 minutes. As distillation starts, it continues until there is no continuous trickling of the distillate, it trickles at every 3-4 minutes this calls for stopping of the distillation process otherwise the distillate will become non-colourless and with smoky smell. The production cost of this distiller is 25,600 naira which is $165.103 using the current exchange rate of 156 naira to $1 US. The calculated selling price of this equipment is Thirty two thousand, two hundred and fifty six (32,256.00) naira only.