Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Agricultural Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Damietta University, Egypt
2
Agric. Eng. Research Institute, Agriculture Research Center, Giza, Egypt
Abstract
Honeycombs should be changed regularly as they become old, damaged and contain the causative organism of many bee diseases, such as European foul brood (EFB), American foul brood (AFB) and Nosema. This research aims to use solar energy for recycling old combs and capping wax byproduct to produce raw beeswax in a simple and cheap way using solar energy as a source of heating. A water bath was typically used as the first approach, then two solar-powered wax melters—one that used only solar energy and the other that used solar energy and additional heat from solar panels—with hot air moving at an average speed of 0.8 m/s and a temperature of 45 °C. The parameters that studied in this present work were included silicone molds to create beeswax in three different beeswax thicknesses (1, 1.5, and 2 cm) and three various heights of perforated tray (5, 10, and 15 cm). First according to the experimental findings, the efficiency of melting beeswax when done traditionally in a water bath was determined to be 73.4%, compared to 85.5% and 87.2% for the first and second solar systems, respectively. However, while the wax melted using a solar-powered wax melter, various measures of macroclimatic parameters such as solar radiation, ambient temperature, and relative humidity for inside and outside were registered. Additionally, during the experimentation, the color properties of the molten beeswax were estimated and analyzed as red (R), green (G), blue (B), lightness (L*), redness (a*), yellowness (b*), chrome (C*), and hue angle (H°). The averaged values for the traditional method were 197.50, 144.81, 51.81, 63.53, 11.02, 54.49, 55.81° and 79.21°, respectively, and 251.25, 188.50, 46, 80.14,10.80, 74.07, 74.85° and 81.70° for first solar system, and 245.75, 216, 145, 87.34, 0.85, 38.77, 38.78° and 88.74° for second solar system.
Keywords
)
View on SCiNiTO