Fish smoking is an activity that is commonly employed by fish farmers and entrepreneurs to preserve fish products. However, the method employed by fish farmers mostly is unhygienic and laborious. NCAM had produced charcoal fired fish smoking kilns to address this bottleneck. However, the heat loss became a source of worry, coupled with the increasing cost and non-availability of charcoal to fuel the fish kiln. This paper looked at the heat preservation in the smoking chamber and went ahead to lag the upper part of the chamber with the primary objective of conserving the heat thus reducing the quantity of charcoal utilized for smoking and also conserving the heat in the smoking chamber. Comparative performance evaluation was carried out between the fully lagged and the partially lagged charcoal fired smoking kiln. Results indicated that the fully lagged had a better overall efficiency than the partially lagged. The fully lagged generated an average temperature of 63oC over thirty-one (31) hours while the partially lagged generated an average temperature of 59oC over forty-three (43) hours for the two kilns to effectively smoke catfish from 65% to 4% fish moisture content.
Keywords: Fish, NCAM., Smoking kiln, comparative performance evaluation
