Journal of Food Processing & Technology

Abstract

Design, Construction and Performance Evaluation of a Trombe Wall Poultry Day-Old Chick Brooding House

W. I. Okonkwo, C. O. Akubuo, C. J. Ohagwu

The recent increasing interest shown in passive solar heating is motivated by their capacity of providing thermal comfort and energy saving. Among the passive solar heating, Trombe wall system has aroused great attraction for its simple design. This is because Trombe wall system could be easily adopted in animal husbandry. As a consequence its use is encouraged in commercial poultry day old chicks production systems. In this study a passive solar heating system using Trombe wall for poultry day old chicks brooding house was designed, constructed and the performance evaluation conducted at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria latitude 6°56N. The Trombe wall powered poultry house is capable of handling about 2000 broiler day old chicks per batch for a period of five weeks brooding session. The major components of the poultry brooding house were a Trombe wall system measuring 10 m × 8.08 m with 0.25 m wall thickness for solar energy heat collection and storage and a brooding room measuring 80.8m² floor area. Physical elements and biological performance of the poultry brooding house were experimentally monitored in order to determine the parametric functionality of the poultry brooding house. Physical elements tested include ambient condition, temperature and relative humidity of the brooding house while the biological test performance evaluation was conducted using poultry day old chicks for four weeks in three replicates. Results of the performance evaluation of the Trombe wall poultry house showed that physical elements measured as temperature and relative humidity of the brooding room ranged between 28°C-35°C and 56%-76% when the ambient condition was between 18°C-37°C and 45%-87% respectively while solar irradiance for the period was between 76 W/m²-860 W/m². The biological performance showed that the chicks maintained an average live weight of 786.1g after four weeks of brooding operation with average 3% mortality rate. These results showed that Trombe wall system could be a useful heating alternative for poultry day old chicks brooding operation especially in the tropics and cold regions where the conventional heat supplying systems are unreliable, unsustainable and expensive.

Published Date: 2021-09-08; Received Date: 2021-08-20