Development of Thermoelectrıc Egg Incubator Integrated wıth Thermal Energy Storage System

Abstract

Egg incubation plays an important role in the poultry production system especially during the day-old chick development. In Nigeria, poultry production is a lucrative business but lack of commercially owned hatchery machines hinders the expansion and make poultry products for instance day old chicks costly more especially in the northern part of Nigeria. In this paper, the egg incubation system was designed with two (2) operating modes of heat sources namely: a thermoelectric module used for daytime operation and a thermal storage system containing phase change materials (PCM) which supplied heat to the system for nighttime operation. The solar PV arrays were designed to be the primary energy source for generating of electricity, which was supplied to heat sources for providing fertile eggs with five (5) egg trays that contains 60 eggs each per hatching process. The result revealed that temperature inside incubation chamber and relative humidity (RH) were controlled under optimum environmental conditions for hatching 36-39°C and 56-80% respectively to stimulate embryonic growth. As a result, the system achieved and maintained an optimum incubating temperature in the range of 36-39oC and the relative humidity (RH) of 60-80% over the incubating period of 21 days.