摘要：The design of large plants for the processing of oil bean seed, which is abundant in the rain forest zones of Nigeria, has been hampered by the dearth of kinetic and thermodynamic parameters for the scale-up of pilot plants This work addresses part of this problem by determining some kinetic constants. During the fermentation of oil bean seed, the action of endogenous protease on protein constituents of the seed coagulated by boiling result in the formation of amino acid and liberation of NH3 gas. This work utilizes the rate of NH3 gas liberated to monitor the kinetics of the process. To monitor the rate of release of NH3 gas, four different samples were prepared, two with the same boiling time but different sizes and the other two with the same size but different boiling time. One sample was set aside as a control experiment. The samples were incubated at 30 0C. From the results obtained both the boiling time and particle size of the sliced seeds affected the rate of fermentation. There was also a noticeable change in the pH from acidic to basic condition during the period of fermentation. At the end of the experiment the sample B gave the best results with y=0.0015x+5.299 while R2=0.989for the plot of pH against time and y=0.381x-5.9h with R2=0.938 for the plot of percentage concentration of NH3against time
