Design and Fabrication of a Charcoal Fish Smoking KILN

Abstract

The fabricated charcoal fish smoking kiln was done to improve on the performance of the existing technology and determine its performance for future applications. The charcoal fish smoking kiln is made from rectangular mild steel of 2mm thickness and has three chambers such as the blower chamber, charcoal chamber, and the smoke chambers respectively. The chambers were insulated with 20mm thick thermosetting polymer welded in between two mild steel plates. The end of the smoke chambers is connected to a blower to assists in the heat convective flow mechanism during operation. The weight loss of the fish sample being calculated can be used to determine the smoking efficiency, including the smoking time by using charcoal and the temperature can as well be determined. The smoking kiln was tested by using two different species of fish: cat and panla smoked to an average moisture content of 62.5% within an average period of 4 hours, the average final weight of the dried fish was 0.24 Kg, weight loss 22.45Wb, residence temperature of 60-800C, heat exchanger temperature is 2430C, and heat different at chimney 2420C. The fabricated machine is highly efficient. It produced dried smoked fish that lasted for seven weeks without spoilage. The fish produced had a golden brown colour. The fish processing itself took less than one hour and the temperature of the heat supplied was quite higher than the traditional drum oven type.