Abstract
Cocoa beans (Theobroma cacao L.) are the principal raw material for chocolate manufacture. Before cocoa beans are ready for the chocolate industry, farm‐based fermentation and drying processes are key determinants of bean quality and hence the price. To improve its value, cocoa beans were dried in a modified greenhouse (MGHD), conventional greenhouse (CGHD), and open sun (OSD) dryers. The drying behavior, kinetics, and quality were evaluated. The MGHD was constructed by modifying a conventional greenhouse with a fleece of black polyester material. Evaluation of air properties of the dryers without and with cocoa beans showed that the MGHD had average temperatures of 2 and 8°C above, and relative humidity of 12.28% and 25.48% below the CGHD and OSD, respectively. The drying data were fitted to four thin layer mathematical models. The Page and Overhult models gave favorable ranges of R 2 (.976 to .987), chi‐square (3.7 × 10−4 to 9.9 × 10−4), and root mean square (RMSE; 0.0188 to 0.0307) for the three dryers. The cocoa beans dried in the MGHD took a shorter time to reach the expected 5%–8% moisture content and were of grade one quality.
Highlights
In Cameroon, cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is a major cash crop constituting over 90% of the income earnings to growers, with a projected annual production of about 600,000 tons by 2020 (NCCB, 2017)
Mathematical modeling of the drying process of cocoa beans and other produce using conventional greenhouse dryers has been documented by several authors (Nidhi, 2015; Puello-Mendez et al, 2017), such information using a greenhouse dryer equipped with fleece is limited in literature
Temperature and relative humidity (RH) changes were observed to have a direct influence on the drying rate of cocoa beans
Summary
In Cameroon, cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is a major cash crop constituting over 90% of the income earnings to growers, with a projected annual production of about 600,000 tons by 2020 (NCCB, 2017). Preferred solar dryers (including greenhouse dryers) should reduce contamination, dry faster and uniformly, giving a better quality product than open-air methods (Nidhi, 2015; Puello-Mendez et al, 2017). Mathematical modeling of the drying process of cocoa beans and other produce using conventional greenhouse dryers has been documented by several authors (Nidhi, 2015; Puello-Mendez et al, 2017), such information using a greenhouse dryer equipped with fleece is limited in literature. Mathematical modeling was done using the Page (Karathanos & Belessiotis, 1999), Henderson and Pabis (Akpinar, Bicer, & Yildiz, 2003), Lewis (Ndukwu, Ogunlowo, & Olukunle, 2010), and Overhult (Fernando & Amarasinghe, 2016) equations
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