Design, Construction and Testing of Solar Egg Incubator with Thermal Storage System
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Date
2020-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Incubation is a process by which birds hatch their eggs and develop the embryo within their egg in to young off-spring. In Ethiopia where most of the population live in rural areas where there is no access to grid provided electricity, the method of hatching used were restricted to natural incubation in which the mother hen or broody hen provide the necessary condition for the development of embryo to fully developed offspring. But this is inefficient technique in terms’ of production number, since the mother hen can produce limited amount of young offspring (from 10-12 per cycle).
So to solve the problem associated poultry industry hatching method, in this research design, construction and testing of solar poultry egg incubator for hatching chicken egg which can be used in rural areas of the country is discussed.
The system has solar thermal collector integrated with low power photovoltaic panel. It uses solar thermal energy to heat air inside solar collector. Air is pressurized from the environment to the solar collector by the inlet fan and gain heat inside the air chamber. The heated air from the collector flow to the incubation chamber due to pressure difference created between them by the inlet fan. Heat exchange process takes place inside the incubation chamber from the hot air to the egg maintaining the egg at 37.80c and 60% the optimum temperature and relative humidity required for incubation respectively.
The machine has incubation capacity of 80 egg per on incubation cycle (21 days). The amount of heat energy needed for the incubation of the specified amount of egg is 185w. Total collector area of is used for utilization of the required amount of energy. Thermal energy storage system using paraffin wax as a thermal mass. It is used to store thermal energy needed for the time direct solar radiation is not available. 20kg of paraffin wax is used as a thermal storage material and the volume of thermal storage container is to replace the amount of 80w lost energy in the form of heat from the incubator box during the time direct solar radiation is not available.
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Keywords
Thermal Storage System, Construction, Solar Egg Incubator