Avaliação de custos da secagem de polpa de frutas em estufa de laboratório e biorreator secador solar

Abstract

Food drying has the potential to add technological advantages to the product in several ways. The foam mat technique is a procedure responsible for reducing the operating time, being convenient for applications with little availability of heat, such as the solar dryer. Studies were carried out on the processing of cocoa pulp in an oven with air circulation by natural convection and in a solar dryer bioreactor (BSS) in order to analyze the performance and evaluate the costs of the process. It was observed that, in the moisture range considered in this work, drying occurred in the constant rate period for both equipment. In the description of the kinetics, linear regression models were applied, which showed good quality of fit with a coefficient of determination greater than 0.95. Through the analysis of processing costs, it was possible to conclude that, although the drying in stove presented better performance in relation to the solar dryer (final moisture content 40% and 71% respectively when dried for 290 min), the operational costs in the stove are higher due to the energy consumption.