About the Journal

In Nigeria almost all the local foundry shops rely on the manually operated blowers for
supplying air for the combustion of the charcoals to melt metals. This manually operated
blower has showed that much man-hour is required during firing as one labourer is
dedicated to driving the rotary blower. This is labourous and reduces the rate of
productivity of the enterprise. Therefore, it is necessary to find easier ways of supplying
the energy required for the combustion so as to increase productivity. A solar powered
blower is designed and constructed in this work. The performances of manually operated
and solar powered air blowers are compared. Performance results of the manually operated
air blower showed that it takes about 67 minutes and 42 minutes to melt 4kg of aluminum
and zinc respectively. On the other hand, for the solar-powered air blower, it takes about
30 minutes and 17 minutes to melt 4kg of aluminum and zinc respectively. This indicates
that the solar-powered air blower takes a shorter time to melt metals when compared with
the manually operated air blower. In addition, the solar powered air blower eliminates the
labourous aspect of supplying energy for melting metals and also reduces the times spent
in metal melting process.