Development of a Device to Pulping Fruits of Bocaiuva (Acrocomia aculeate sp.): Intended for the Communities that Practice Sustainable Agriculture or Strativism
quinta-feira, setembro 19, 2019
Authors: Carlos Alberto Machado Chuba, Ramon Eduardo Pereira Silva , Andrea Cristina dos Santos & Eliana Janet Sanjinez-Argandoña
Abstract: Bocaiuva (Acrocomia aculeata) fruit pulp has high potential for food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications
and in the biofuel industry, however, the main hindrance for these applications is the availability of pulp in
sufficient quantity. The pulp of this fruit is usually supplied by rural communities where the processors use manual
pulping, which is not only time-consuming but yields product of low quality.
Therefore, the objective of this work
was to design, fabricate and evaluate the efficiency of an experimental bench device for pulping bocaiuva fruits.
The bench device was designed to be compact and easy to operate, consisting of three units (processing, secondary,
and peripheral) with intermittent operation and pulping performed by shearing. The performance evaluation of the
machine was carried out with fruit dehydrated at 70 ºC and different times of dehydration (6, 12 and 24 hours). The
pulp weight was evaluated every 15 seconds during the pulping process period (150 seconds).
The highest pulping
efficiency (96%) was obtained with fruits that were dehydrated for 24 hours, with a 120-second pulping, which
resulted in a production rate of 5.5 kg h-1 This high efficiency makes this mechanized prototype effective for
pulping bocaiuva fruits and, thus, it can replace manual pulping, especially in rural communities involved with the
bocaiuva production chain.
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Page: Research Gate
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