Design and Evaluation of Livestock Dewatering Machine

A livestock dewatering machine was designed, fabricated and evaluated to improve on-farm management of animal waste. This is in response to the need to reduce and eliminate the many challenges of improper waste handling in livestock production farms in Nigeria. The machine consists of a hopper, gear rack, shaft, speed reducer, ball bearings, screen, and discharge chute. The machine is manually operated by cranking of the handle which transmits torque to the shaft and thus set the rack in motion. The rack compresses the slurry against the wall of hard casing, and the liquid is separated from the waste and let out through the screen at the bottom of the casing, leaving the dewatered waste to escape through the discharge chute. Particle size distribution analysis guided the choice of screen size of 2 mm diameter. The machine was tested with pig dung, and it gave a throughput capacity of 472.75 kh/hr and a separating efficiency of 9%.