The extrusion of starch-based products has been a matter of interest, especially for the pasta and the snack food production. In recent years, twin-screw extruders for snack food have been studied from both structural and fluid dynamics viewpoints. This project started from the rheological characterization of a starch-based dough (corn 34 wt%, tapioca 32 wt%), comparing viscosity values acquired in laboratory with different theoretical models found in literature. A computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation recreating the simple case of a fluid flow between two parallel plates was carried out to validate the former comparison. After the rheological validation was completed, the second phase of this work covered a 3D CFD simulation of the first part of the twin-screw extruder (feeding zone). The objective was to find a suitable model for describing the dough rheological behavior and the operating conditions of a co-rotating intermeshing twin-screw extruder. Once the model would be defined, it would allow to investigate several working conditions and different screws geometries of the machine, predicting the evolution of the product rheological properties.
This work presents the result of a research project, concerning the development of a simulation model for a water supply system of a dairy company, located in Parma, Italy. The approach developed allows investigating, through process simulation, the plant areas where the efficiency of the water supply system can be significantly improved by means of some simple interventions. The final objective is to reduce the water consumption of the plant; this represents a relevant issue to the dairy industry. In line with this goal, at first the simulation model was used to reproduce the current (AS IS) system, so as to reach a precise knowledge of the water flows in the plant. In the second part of the work, a series of alternative (TO BE) scenarios was investigated, and the related performance was assessed, thus identifying the best plant configuration. The process simulator was designed under Microsoft Excel, programmed with Visual Basic for Applications. Thanks to the study implemented, an optimal scenario of the water supply system was finally identified, which allows savings up to 7.2% of water compared to the original configuration.
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