Abstract:
Areke distillation is one of the common economic activities and a source of income for many
households in Ethiopia. But locally areke distillation process consumes much amount of wood
biomass and takes a long time. liter of areke distillation takes up to 2 to 3hours by consuming
8 to 9 kg wood biomass that causes environmental pollution and health problems.
This thesis work presents the manufacturing of an energy-efficient distilling pot from aluminum
and iron chips (fine particles) as well as design a simple and cost-effective heat exchanger for
condensing and cooling of areke vapor. Six round bottoming samples of pots were prepared to
have a surface area 2 0.28m from random mixtures of 10%, 20%, and 30%aluminum fine particles
with clay soil as well as 10%, 20%, and 30%iron fine particles with clay soil independently. The
aluminum and iron fine particles are released as chips in different construction, welding, and
other machine processing small industries. The design condenser and cooler heat exchanger is
from the copper tube with a length of 5.8m and an area of 2 3.8cm that immersed and jacketed in
replaceable water. An experimental setup was manufactured and conducted tests by distilling the
same liter of areke by recording the amounts of consumed wood biomass, distillation time, amount
of distillation, and checking the physical properties of local areke with comparing local apparatus.
Sigma plot v 14 is used to linear regression fitting curve of properties and the modeling was done
using solid work and CATIA software.
The test and analysis results showed that the thermal properties of sample pots (rate of heat
transfer, conductivity, specific, diffusivity, effusivity, and others) have a great dependence on a
mixed amount of aluminum and iron fine particles. The condensing and cooling capacity of the
design heat exchanger has good enough to cool the areke vapor. It found that similar to local
apparatus it is possible to distill1 liter of areke from5.5 liters of areke mash using a design heat
exchanger with assembling all prepared sample pots of 10%, 20%, and 30%an aluminum particle
as well as 10%, 20%, and 30%iron fine particles and soil by consuming 7.9kg, 6.35kg, 5.75kg,
8.3kg, 7.45kg and 6.65kg of wood in 1.335hr, 1.225hr, 1.125hr, 1.385hr, 1.28hr and1.22hr
respectively. 30% aluminum-containing sample pots with a heat exchanger assembly is good
which reduces more time and wood biomass from a prepared sample of pots. Moreover, physical
property results of distilled areke have excellent agreement with local areke.