Peter Ajewole - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Peter Ajewole

With the advances in information and communication technology, increase in school enrolments and ... more With the advances in information and communication technology, increase in school enrolments and the need for more reliability in students' assessment, Computer-Based Testing (CBT) is recently gaining more popularity as a means of administering tests in educational institutions and corporate organisations. This paper reports the development of a computer-based test platform for Centre of Entrepreneurship Development and Vocational Studies (CEDVS) of The Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. A free and open source software (FOSS) called MOODLE was used to develop the platform. The platform was test run to administer tests to students offering Entrepreneurial Courses in the Polytechnic. Out of 202 students tested, 89% preferred CBT to paper-based tests, 92% agreed that the platform was interactive and easy to use while 12% believed that the use of CBT will make test taking difficult.

International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 2010

PASAE-NIAE 2021 INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE, 2021

Power and machinery account for 60% of total investment in farm mechanisation. Despite huge inves... more Power and machinery account for 60% of total investment in farm mechanisation. Despite huge investment of both Nigerian government and private sector in farm machinery acquisition, farm machinery are still underutilized and there is low level of mechanisation of agricultural production in the country. The traditional method of farm machinery management has been the intuitive and experience based approach commonly employed by farmers which often results in farm machinery not operating at optimum efficiency. In this paper, a scientific approach called Decision Support System (DSS) is proposed. This is a computer-based system that takes advantage of latest technologies in aiding the farmers to make proper decision in planning, selection and matching of farm machinery which results in increased profits and decreased costs of machinery operation and labour. Least Cost and Brixius Traction Models together with ASABE standard equations form the underlying logic for the DSS development. The DSS can be accessed synchronously on desktop computers, web browser and also as a mobile application. It is expected that the DSS will provide a dynamic and accessible solution to decision making problems usually encountered by farmers, machinery managers, machinery dealers and tractor hiring service providers in machinery selection, tractor-implement matching, cost evaluation and maintenance of farm machinery.

CRID CONFERENCE, FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC ADO-EKITI, 2019

Nigerian Farmers are in dire need of information for accurate and profitable farming practice. Th... more Nigerian Farmers are in dire need of information for accurate and profitable farming practice. The need is more acute given the ever increasing population and inadequate food production to meet demands. There is a wide disconnect between the existing global and scholarly knowledge about best agronomic practices and the methods currently employed by most farmers. Apart from the traditional experienced-based and intuitive approach most farmers use, they also depend on information from radio and friends. This has not been effective and yielding positive results especially with continual decline in number of extension workers available in the country. While 75% of Nigerian rural farmers have access to mobile phones and 36 million people use smart phones, there is need to leverage on mobile technologies to provide real time information to farmers on best agronomic practices. This will reduce risks and cost of farm inputs and also lead to maximum profits from farming enterprise.

The design, fabrication and performance evaluation of a fish feed pelletizing machine for low inc... more The design, fabrication and performance evaluation of a fish feed pelletizing machine for low income farmers was carried out with the view to encourage local technology, as most of the fish feed pelletizing machines available are imported. The fish feed pelletizer is powered by an electric motor and it works by the rotation of a screw auger which propels the feed mix through a die. The screw auger is enclosed in the auger casing and is propelled by an electric motor with the aid of belt and pulleys. This auger is fed through a hopper, which is able to hold a large quantity of the feed mix at a time. The machine was tested using different die diameters of 2 mm, 4 mm and 6 mm. The test was conducted at different moisture content of 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30% and 35% wet basis. The machine test results showed that the pelletizing efficiency increases as moisture content and die diameter increase. The machine throughput also increases with both moisture Original Research Article

IOSR Journal of Agriculture and Veterinary Science (IOSR-JAVS), 2021

Sifting of cassava mash is an essential unit operation for the production of gari and still a man... more Sifting of cassava mash is an essential unit operation for the production of gari and still a manual operation in tropical crop processing. In this study, the existing machine was modified, tested and performance evaluation was also carried out at three moisture content levels (24.6%, 22.3%, and 20.2%) wet basis at varying speeds of (1200rpm, 970rpm, and 730 rpm) and feed rate of (5kg, 10kg, 15kg, and 20kg). The results show that the sifter has the highest efficiency of 99.4% at 20.2% moisture content at the sifting speed of 1200rpm. Output Capacity of 569.03kg/hr was obtained and this increased as the feed rate increases at 20.2% moisture content. Analysis of Variance for the Sifting Efficiency was computed and the result reveals that the speed, feed rate, and moisture content are significant. The machine is affordable and adequately manageable therefore recommended for the small scale and medium scale cassava processor.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Applied Science (IJRIAS), 2021

Potato is the world's fourth-largest food crop. The traditional method of harvesting with spades,... more Potato is the world's fourth-largest food crop. The traditional method of harvesting with spades, digging hoes, digging forks has proven to be laborious, and time consuming with low output. Some mechanical equipment for the harvesting of potato are either not suitable to the soil condition or difficult to procure in Sub-Sahara Africa. This work focused on the development of an indigenous potato diggerto solve the aforementioned challenges. The design parameters determined are the diameter of the conveyor shaft, power requirement, conveyor capacity length of chain, diameter of driven sprocket, and output speed from gearbox. The semi-mounted potato digger was successfully designed and fabricated using the readily available materials. The implement has a 2.365kW power requirement while the calculated conveyor shaft diameter is 30.9 mm diameter. The digger was designed to work under common soil conditions in the tropics. At 10km/hr tractor speed, the digging and conveyor efficiencies obtained were 97.6% and 63.5% respectively while the theoretical and effective field capacities were 1.1ha/hr and 0.604ha/hr respectively.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Applied Science (IJRIAS), 2021

Fish is a perishable food material and it is highly susceptible to deterioration without any pres... more Fish is a perishable food material and it is highly susceptible to deterioration without any preservative or processing measure. Harvesting of fish, handling, processing, and distribution provide livelihood for millions of people, as well as providing foreign exchange to many countries in Africa, but about 40% of the fish caught in the rural communities get spoilt as a result of poor infrastructures for post-harvest processing and storage. In order to solve this problem, the performance evaluation of a smoking kiln that was fabricated and assembled at the engineering workshop of the Department of Agricultural and Bio-Environmental Engineering, The Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria, was carried out. The smoking cabinet was made from galvanized sheet metal and lagged with insulator to prevent heat loss, the smoking chamber consists of 5 set of trays of 520 x 480 x 80mm. The fish smoking kiln was tested with three different fish (Herring fish, Stock Fish and Cat Fish) using charcoal and electric heat sources. The kiln gave higher drying rate and required more energy cost for all the three fish types when powered with charcoal. However, it was discovered that the labour cost in using charcoal was less than that of the electric heat source. The stock fish had highest drying rate and least energy and labour cost when compared with other fish types.

Prediction of pressure-sinkage behaviour of soil is of great interest to the agricultural enginee... more Prediction of pressure-sinkage behaviour of soil is of great interest to the agricultural engineer in the evaluation of soil compaction caused by farm vehicles and to the construction equipment engineer in the assessment of the effectiveness of soil compactors and the like. To predict the pressure-sinkage behaviour of a loamy sand soil, multiple plate penetration tests were conducted using three small rectangular plates. From the pressure versus sinkage relationship of the soil, soil stiffness constants c k ,  k and n corresponding to Bekker's model of soil pressure-sinkage were determined. At moisture content of 15.86 % dry basis and different cone indexes of 293, 422, 724 and 11017 kPa, the average values of 331.56 kN/m n-1 , 4769.80 kN/m n and 1.2397 obtained for c k ,  k and n respectively were fitted into Bekker's equation in order to establish the model for pressure-sinkage relationship for the soil under investigation and also to predict the sinkage-behaviour of the...

The impinging velocitythat gives that maximum cracking efficiency of a vertical shaft centrifugal... more The impinging velocitythat gives that maximum cracking efficiency of a vertical shaft centrifugal palm nut cracking machine was determined in this study. A nut cracking energy instrument which consists of a hammering mass falling vertically on palm nuts placed on a base was used to determine potential energy required to crack the nuts. This energy was equated to the kinetic energy required to crack the nuts in a centrifugal palm nut cracking machine, from which the average impinging velocity was determined. Experiment was carried out to generate cracking energy data for both Dura and Tenera varieties of palm nuts available in the study area. For Dura type, highest percentage of fully cracked (FC) nuts and average impinging velocity of 32.50 m/s were obtained when the height of the hammering mass was set at 0.15m, 0.25m and 0.30m for nuts sorted into diameter ranges of d < 15mm, 15mm ≤ d ≤ 18mm, and 18mm ≤ d ≤ 22mm respectively. For the Tenera type, highest percentage of fully cra...

A speed selection system was designed and incorporated into an existing mechanical row weeder. A ... more A speed selection system was designed and incorporated into an existing mechanical row weeder. A 2-stroke, air-cooled, 9.85hp motorcycle engine was used as the power source for the weeder. The motorcycle gear system was adapted to supply four different speeds which can be engaged or disengaged using a fabricated clutch. Power is transmitted via chain and sprocket and belt and pulley drives. Other components of the weeder are frame, tyres, transmission system, rotary blades, circular plates and shaft. Test result shows that effective field capacity of the weeder ranged from 0.013ha/hrat gear 1 and cutting speed of 642rpm to 0.042ha/hr at gear 4 and cutting speed of 1031 rpm. The maximum weeding efficiency of 80% was achieved at gear 4 but with higher fuel consumption of 0.8 liters/hr.

With the advances in information and communication technology, increase in school enrolments and ... more With the advances in information and communication technology, increase in school enrolments and the need for more reliability in students' assessment, Computer-Based Testing (CBT) is recently gaining more popularity as a means of administering tests in educational institutions and corporate organisations. This paper reports the development of a computer-based test platform for Centre of Entrepreneurship Development and Vocational Studies (CEDVS) of The Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. A free and open source software (FOSS) called MOODLE was used to develop the platform. The platform was test run to administer tests to students offering Entrepreneurial Courses in the Polytechnic. Out of 202 students tested, 89% preferred CBT to paper-based tests, 92% agreed that the platform was interactive and easy to use while 12% believed that the use of CBT will make test taking difficult.

With the advances in information and communication technology, increase in school enrolments and ... more With the advances in information and communication technology, increase in school enrolments and the need for more reliability in students' assessment, Computer-Based Testing (CBT) is recently gaining more popularity as a means of administering tests in educational institutions and corporate organisations. This paper reports the development of a computer-based test platform for Centre of Entrepreneurship Development and Vocational Studies (CEDVS) of The Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. A free and open source software (FOSS) called MOODLE was used to develop the platform. The platform was test run to administer tests to students offering Entrepreneurial Courses in the Polytechnic. Out of 202 students tested, 89% preferred CBT to paper-based tests, 92% agreed that the platform was interactive and easy to use while 12% believed that the use of CBT will make test taking difficult.

International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 2010

PASAE-NIAE 2021 INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE, 2021

Power and machinery account for 60% of total investment in farm mechanisation. Despite huge inves... more Power and machinery account for 60% of total investment in farm mechanisation. Despite huge investment of both Nigerian government and private sector in farm machinery acquisition, farm machinery are still underutilized and there is low level of mechanisation of agricultural production in the country. The traditional method of farm machinery management has been the intuitive and experience based approach commonly employed by farmers which often results in farm machinery not operating at optimum efficiency. In this paper, a scientific approach called Decision Support System (DSS) is proposed. This is a computer-based system that takes advantage of latest technologies in aiding the farmers to make proper decision in planning, selection and matching of farm machinery which results in increased profits and decreased costs of machinery operation and labour. Least Cost and Brixius Traction Models together with ASABE standard equations form the underlying logic for the DSS development. The DSS can be accessed synchronously on desktop computers, web browser and also as a mobile application. It is expected that the DSS will provide a dynamic and accessible solution to decision making problems usually encountered by farmers, machinery managers, machinery dealers and tractor hiring service providers in machinery selection, tractor-implement matching, cost evaluation and maintenance of farm machinery.

CRID CONFERENCE, FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC ADO-EKITI, 2019

Nigerian Farmers are in dire need of information for accurate and profitable farming practice. Th... more Nigerian Farmers are in dire need of information for accurate and profitable farming practice. The need is more acute given the ever increasing population and inadequate food production to meet demands. There is a wide disconnect between the existing global and scholarly knowledge about best agronomic practices and the methods currently employed by most farmers. Apart from the traditional experienced-based and intuitive approach most farmers use, they also depend on information from radio and friends. This has not been effective and yielding positive results especially with continual decline in number of extension workers available in the country. While 75% of Nigerian rural farmers have access to mobile phones and 36 million people use smart phones, there is need to leverage on mobile technologies to provide real time information to farmers on best agronomic practices. This will reduce risks and cost of farm inputs and also lead to maximum profits from farming enterprise.

The design, fabrication and performance evaluation of a fish feed pelletizing machine for low inc... more The design, fabrication and performance evaluation of a fish feed pelletizing machine for low income farmers was carried out with the view to encourage local technology, as most of the fish feed pelletizing machines available are imported. The fish feed pelletizer is powered by an electric motor and it works by the rotation of a screw auger which propels the feed mix through a die. The screw auger is enclosed in the auger casing and is propelled by an electric motor with the aid of belt and pulleys. This auger is fed through a hopper, which is able to hold a large quantity of the feed mix at a time. The machine was tested using different die diameters of 2 mm, 4 mm and 6 mm. The test was conducted at different moisture content of 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30% and 35% wet basis. The machine test results showed that the pelletizing efficiency increases as moisture content and die diameter increase. The machine throughput also increases with both moisture Original Research Article

IOSR Journal of Agriculture and Veterinary Science (IOSR-JAVS), 2021

Sifting of cassava mash is an essential unit operation for the production of gari and still a man... more Sifting of cassava mash is an essential unit operation for the production of gari and still a manual operation in tropical crop processing. In this study, the existing machine was modified, tested and performance evaluation was also carried out at three moisture content levels (24.6%, 22.3%, and 20.2%) wet basis at varying speeds of (1200rpm, 970rpm, and 730 rpm) and feed rate of (5kg, 10kg, 15kg, and 20kg). The results show that the sifter has the highest efficiency of 99.4% at 20.2% moisture content at the sifting speed of 1200rpm. Output Capacity of 569.03kg/hr was obtained and this increased as the feed rate increases at 20.2% moisture content. Analysis of Variance for the Sifting Efficiency was computed and the result reveals that the speed, feed rate, and moisture content are significant. The machine is affordable and adequately manageable therefore recommended for the small scale and medium scale cassava processor.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Applied Science (IJRIAS), 2021

Potato is the world's fourth-largest food crop. The traditional method of harvesting with spades,... more Potato is the world's fourth-largest food crop. The traditional method of harvesting with spades, digging hoes, digging forks has proven to be laborious, and time consuming with low output. Some mechanical equipment for the harvesting of potato are either not suitable to the soil condition or difficult to procure in Sub-Sahara Africa. This work focused on the development of an indigenous potato diggerto solve the aforementioned challenges. The design parameters determined are the diameter of the conveyor shaft, power requirement, conveyor capacity length of chain, diameter of driven sprocket, and output speed from gearbox. The semi-mounted potato digger was successfully designed and fabricated using the readily available materials. The implement has a 2.365kW power requirement while the calculated conveyor shaft diameter is 30.9 mm diameter. The digger was designed to work under common soil conditions in the tropics. At 10km/hr tractor speed, the digging and conveyor efficiencies obtained were 97.6% and 63.5% respectively while the theoretical and effective field capacities were 1.1ha/hr and 0.604ha/hr respectively.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Applied Science (IJRIAS), 2021

Fish is a perishable food material and it is highly susceptible to deterioration without any pres... more Fish is a perishable food material and it is highly susceptible to deterioration without any preservative or processing measure. Harvesting of fish, handling, processing, and distribution provide livelihood for millions of people, as well as providing foreign exchange to many countries in Africa, but about 40% of the fish caught in the rural communities get spoilt as a result of poor infrastructures for post-harvest processing and storage. In order to solve this problem, the performance evaluation of a smoking kiln that was fabricated and assembled at the engineering workshop of the Department of Agricultural and Bio-Environmental Engineering, The Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria, was carried out. The smoking cabinet was made from galvanized sheet metal and lagged with insulator to prevent heat loss, the smoking chamber consists of 5 set of trays of 520 x 480 x 80mm. The fish smoking kiln was tested with three different fish (Herring fish, Stock Fish and Cat Fish) using charcoal and electric heat sources. The kiln gave higher drying rate and required more energy cost for all the three fish types when powered with charcoal. However, it was discovered that the labour cost in using charcoal was less than that of the electric heat source. The stock fish had highest drying rate and least energy and labour cost when compared with other fish types.

Prediction of pressure-sinkage behaviour of soil is of great interest to the agricultural enginee... more Prediction of pressure-sinkage behaviour of soil is of great interest to the agricultural engineer in the evaluation of soil compaction caused by farm vehicles and to the construction equipment engineer in the assessment of the effectiveness of soil compactors and the like. To predict the pressure-sinkage behaviour of a loamy sand soil, multiple plate penetration tests were conducted using three small rectangular plates. From the pressure versus sinkage relationship of the soil, soil stiffness constants c k ,  k and n corresponding to Bekker's model of soil pressure-sinkage were determined. At moisture content of 15.86 % dry basis and different cone indexes of 293, 422, 724 and 11017 kPa, the average values of 331.56 kN/m n-1 , 4769.80 kN/m n and 1.2397 obtained for c k ,  k and n respectively were fitted into Bekker's equation in order to establish the model for pressure-sinkage relationship for the soil under investigation and also to predict the sinkage-behaviour of the...

The impinging velocitythat gives that maximum cracking efficiency of a vertical shaft centrifugal... more The impinging velocitythat gives that maximum cracking efficiency of a vertical shaft centrifugal palm nut cracking machine was determined in this study. A nut cracking energy instrument which consists of a hammering mass falling vertically on palm nuts placed on a base was used to determine potential energy required to crack the nuts. This energy was equated to the kinetic energy required to crack the nuts in a centrifugal palm nut cracking machine, from which the average impinging velocity was determined. Experiment was carried out to generate cracking energy data for both Dura and Tenera varieties of palm nuts available in the study area. For Dura type, highest percentage of fully cracked (FC) nuts and average impinging velocity of 32.50 m/s were obtained when the height of the hammering mass was set at 0.15m, 0.25m and 0.30m for nuts sorted into diameter ranges of d < 15mm, 15mm ≤ d ≤ 18mm, and 18mm ≤ d ≤ 22mm respectively. For the Tenera type, highest percentage of fully cra...

A speed selection system was designed and incorporated into an existing mechanical row weeder. A ... more A speed selection system was designed and incorporated into an existing mechanical row weeder. A 2-stroke, air-cooled, 9.85hp motorcycle engine was used as the power source for the weeder. The motorcycle gear system was adapted to supply four different speeds which can be engaged or disengaged using a fabricated clutch. Power is transmitted via chain and sprocket and belt and pulley drives. Other components of the weeder are frame, tyres, transmission system, rotary blades, circular plates and shaft. Test result shows that effective field capacity of the weeder ranged from 0.013ha/hrat gear 1 and cutting speed of 642rpm to 0.042ha/hr at gear 4 and cutting speed of 1031 rpm. The maximum weeding efficiency of 80% was achieved at gear 4 but with higher fuel consumption of 0.8 liters/hr.

With the advances in information and communication technology, increase in school enrolments and ... more With the advances in information and communication technology, increase in school enrolments and the need for more reliability in students' assessment, Computer-Based Testing (CBT) is recently gaining more popularity as a means of administering tests in educational institutions and corporate organisations. This paper reports the development of a computer-based test platform for Centre of Entrepreneurship Development and Vocational Studies (CEDVS) of The Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. A free and open source software (FOSS) called MOODLE was used to develop the platform. The platform was test run to administer tests to students offering Entrepreneurial Courses in the Polytechnic. Out of 202 students tested, 89% preferred CBT to paper-based tests, 92% agreed that the platform was interactive and easy to use while 12% believed that the use of CBT will make test taking difficult.