Obtaining fruit-drying curves and CFD analysis for corozo (Bactris guineensis)

Abstract

The drying process for "corozo" (Bactris guineensis) is performed in order to establish the values for variables such as temperature and time, while producing adequate dehydration of this type of fruit. Two temperatures values were used, 50°C and 70°C, and a gravimetric procedure was used, with a mass baseline of 100 g, with ripe fruit. The time interval used for data collection was 5 minutes. Tests were also performed to determine the water mass diffusivity inside the fruit considering the same temperature range of the main experiment. A computational validation was also done for the drying process through a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis from the physical properties of the established biomass together with the process conditions, using the mass and energy conservation models and continuity in porous media. A very similar performance was obtained between experimental tests and computational simulation, reduction of the drying time by 40% for a temperature of 70 °C when compared to 50 °C.

CFD numeric simulation to obtain the proper parameters of corozo drying (Bactris guineensis)

“…[6] They performed an analysis to identify the behavior of the heat transfer coefficient by convection and the mass transfer coefficient when a drying process is performed on a plate with porosity, in their study the conjugated behavior between heat and mass transfer of the variables using CFD computational tools was analyzed. [7][8][9][10][11][12] they conducted modeling studies to analyze the heat and mass transfer in drying processes and applied to ceramic materials, wood and food. Analysis that were developed by CFD modeling and were validated in an experimental way, concluding with good results and approximations indicating that the drying and mass transfer operations are quite nourished when applying CFD analysis.…”