Viabilidade da utilização da casca de cacau como combustível no aquecimento de ar para secagem de amêndoas de cacau

• Autor(a) principal: Pereira, Ivan de Oliveira
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/758
• topic: Geração de energia; Cacau; Secagem de amêndoas de cacau; Power generation; Cocoa; Drying cocoa beans; CNPQ::CIENCIAS AGRARIAS::ENGENHARIA AGRICOLA

The overall objective was to study the technical feasibility of the use of cocoa husks for energy in thermochemical conversion processes. To achieve this objective a survey was made of the potential for power generation and technologies available for biomass conversion; characterization of cocoa husks; designing a system gasifier/combustor/dryer; obtaining and using the bark of cocoa chip as a fuel in the drying of cocoa beans and evaluate the quality of processed nuts for the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (HPAs). Based on the accumulated production of dry beans of the cacao region of Bahia the amount of generated bark is equivalent to 107.6 MW and can be used for the generation of heat in the heat-generating systems and also for the generation of electric power systems CHP available in the market as steam turbine, gas turbine and microturbine. Beyond this potential cocoa husks presented favorable conditions for transformation into fuel, that because the characterization results were equivalent to those of other residues that have already been transformed into solid fuel, liquid or gaseous. However, the water content (84.2%) and ash content (12.63%) present in this biomass can contribute negatively to their use as solid fuel. In the processing of cocoa husk dryer tubular convection energy balance was negative and its use as fuel in the system gasifier/combustor/dryer proposed was normally performed, this because the temperature has been effectively controlled, and the levels of air contamination drying when using the cocoa husks remained near other biomass, which is usually used for this purpose. In addition to these tests performed with the cocoa shell scaled up system gasifier/combustor to be coupled to a platform type dryer and found CEPEC similarity to other systems used in this type of transformation of biomass. Therefore, these systems can be used, because the levels of HPA's in processed almonds were below those allowed by European legislation. Thus, the cocoa shell may be used as fuel for systems of direct generation of heat generated by systems gasifier/combustor replacing furnaces, dryers commonly used in cocoa.