Developing Testing And Promotion Of Small Scale Jatropha And Castor Seed Processing Technologies

Abstract Some of the prominent barriers for the transition towards Jatrophacaster plants based bio fuels in Ethiopia are technical gaps and lack of awareness about the advantages of the plants oil especially the jatropha beyond the purposes of fences and lack of utilization technologies. In addition since the seed productions are not yet sufficient and the engine driven presses or big centralized processing facilities are not feasible in rural areas so that small scale press stoves lamps and soap making systems were designed developed tested and used in this project as a live oil expelling utilization and promotion systems in different parts of Ethiopia. The press powered by a hand and hydraulic jack was made in to simple operating mechanism. Single batch 450 gram seed pressing takes 4-5 minutes with the capacity of 1.2 -2 liters oil per hour. A simple stove was modified and adopted to diversity of fuel feed stocks and shows significant improvements of flame height color and fuel consumption rate with reduced amount of smoke especially in jatropha and caster bean seeds and pressed cake. The fuel consumption tests of using 0.5 kg of each fuels resulted in total burning time of 1 -1.30 hours 7-12 minutes boiling time of 10 liter water and measured flame temperature of about 670-800 0c. In addition the jatropha crude oil was also utilized in a developed simple stove and lamp for soap making and also as a fuel in diesel engine after standard laboratory tests of the oil chemical properties. Thus this paper presents results of ways of developing performance tests and promotional aspects of the devices as low-cost and easy-to-use in the rural areas of developing countries like Ethiopia.