Millions of infants in the developing world die due to inadequate health facility. One of such facilities is incubator for preterm in neonatal intensive care unit. Even temperature and moisture distribution inside an incubator has been of great interest and has necessitated investigation of varying hood shapes for an incubator. This work has thus investigated the performance of some selected incubator-hood Three hood geometries namely cuboidal hood, pyramidal hood and hemispherical hood were investigated. The three hoods were made of plexi-glass, which is non-toxic and a good thermal property; a 1.5 Watts heating element was placed inside the incubator to replace the heat loss by a premature baby. The hoods were placed on an existing baby incubator engine comptroller which houses the heater, fan, distilled water container and other accessories. The temperature and relative humidity distribution in the cuboidal hood, pyramidal hood, and hemispherical hood incubators were monitored. The result of the experiments showed that the cuboidal hood incubator being of a simple geometry had the optimal heat distribution and conservation. The other hoods with higher complex had reduced temperature and relative humidity distribution in the incubator.
展开▼
