Abstract
The drying kinetics of three varieties of cocoa beans (N38, F and WA) at 40, 50 and 60 degree centigrade was investigated experimentally. The three different varieties were dried using laboratory air oven UF Memmert and the moisture content determined according to AOAC standards. The results show that drying processes occur mainly in the range of the falling -rate period and the drying rates were observed to be faster at higher drying temperature. The effective diffusivities of the three cocoa beans varieties determined at 40, 50 and 60 degree centigrade ranged between 9.9269 x 10 - 11 and 4.4671 x 10 -10 metre square per second. The predicted Arrhenius constant and activation energy were 2.47 x 10 -10 metre square per second and 23.61 kilojoule per mole . Keywords: Drying kinetics, drying rate, cocoa beans, drying temperature, moisture content, cocoa varieties
Highlights
Cocoa beans are seeds of Theobroma cacao L., which is one of the most important cash crop trees in many tropical countries including Nigeria, Cote D’voire, Ghana, Indonesia, Cameroun, Brazil, Ecuador, Malaysia, Sierra-Leone and Republic of Benin
The return of civilian administration in Nigeria in 1999 ushered in a good fortune for cocoa industry with the establishment of the National Cocoa Development Committee (NCDC) in 2000 which is domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMA&RD) (Alamu, 2013)
This paper presents the drying kinetics of three varieties of cocoa beans under air
Summary
Cocoa beans are seeds of Theobroma cacao L., which is one of the most important cash crop trees in many tropical countries including Nigeria, Cote D’voire, Ghana, Indonesia, Cameroun, Brazil, Ecuador, Malaysia, Sierra-Leone and Republic of Benin. In order to promote the production of cocoa to meet the needs of expanding industrial sector and export market, a special programme tagged cocoa re-birth was launched in 2005. The policy thrust of the programme was to promote the production of cocoa to meet the needs of an expanding industrial sector and export market (Alamu, 2013). The steps include an adequate pod maturity, pod cracking and seed extraction, fermentation, drying, selection and storage (Schwan et al, 1995). Among these postharvest processing steps, fermentation and drying are the major steps that must be carried out
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