Purificação de Goma de Cajueiro

• Autor(a) principal: Araújo, Aislan Baden da Conceição
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC)
• Texto Completo: http://www.repositorio.ufc.br/handle/riufc/40030
• topic: Goma; Precipitação; Cajueiro; Solubilidade; Purificação

The exploitation of gums from natural sources is one of the most used ways to obtain this type of input, being the food industry the main consumer of natural gums. Arabic gum is widely used in food applications; however, obtaining it may represent high costs due to factors related to its production. In this context cashew gum is suggested as a possible substitute for arabic gum in some applications, due to its properties similar to those of arabic gum. In order for cashew gum to be effectively used as an input to the food industry, it is necessary to have an efficient and rapid methodology to obtain the cashew gum, so that the gum can be produced in a competitive way in relation to those already used in the market. With this perspective, the objective of this work was to define the conditions for the dissolution, precipitation and sedimentation of the cashew gum that could make the process of obtaining the gum faster, aiming at the design of a continuous settler for the precipitation of the gum. The dissolution conditions of the gum in water were evaluated for different gum granulometries and for different dissolution times, the effects of increasing the amount of alcohol in the gum precipitation stage in ethanol was also tested. Finally, the sedimentation of the gum in ethanol was analyzed and then the operating conditions were defined for a bench scale gum sedimentation column. From the results obtained in each test it was defined that the cashew gum in the range of granulometry between 300 and 500 μm was the one that presented greater ease of dissolution in a time of agitation of 20 minutes in water. The ratio of gum and alcohol solution defined as ideal for the precipitation stage was 1:2, and in the sedimentation tests it was shown that the gum has a very high sedimentation rate, which would allow higher flow rates in a sedimentation column.