Avaliação da secagem da polpa do coco em secadores convectivos e híbridos: uma abordagem experimental e fluidodinâmica

Abstract

Coconut, the main fruit of the palm tree belonging to the Arecaceae family, has high added value within academic and industrial spheres. In the industrial sphere, its main focus is on the food sector. Therefore, some parameters must be taken into consideration when handling it, with moisture content being an essential parameter for adequate quality control. Given the need to maintain a low free water content in the coconut pulp, it is necessary to use equipment that removes and controls moisture from the food, with dryers being exponent equipment for this application. Due to its wide applicability, today there is a range of different types of dryers, specific to each type of operation, regime and objective. With this in mind, the present work aims to experimentally carry out the drying process of coconut pulp in two dryers, convective and hybrid (convective-infrared), and then determine the drying efficiency for each of the cases evaluated. For this, the drying kinetic curves were used as a device and selection criterion. Furthermore, the study proposal was to optimize different configurations of the inlet and outlet airflow positions of the dryer considered to be more efficient in the drying process, using CFD techniques. To carry out the work, the software Statisca® and Origin were used to determine the drying kinetics, the open source software OpenFOAM to carry out the simulations and Paraview to visualize results. Therefore, it was determined that the hybrid dryer (convective-infrared) presented a higher efficiency in drying coconut pulp, when compared to the convective dryer. Furthermore, through CFD techniques, the hybrid dryer had its air flow inlet and outlet positions optimized, presenting the following configurations for X1E, Y1E, Y1S and Y2S as the best geometric arrangement, respectively: 0,1122 m, 0,1782 m, 0,1782 m and 0,1782 m.