Favorite this paper

The by-product from the brassage step in brewery process showed high moisture content. To extend shelf-life and allow its use in the food industry, especially for breadmaking, is necessary to dry the material. For a successful dehydration process is very important to know the drying kinetics behavior. This work aimed to determine the drying kinetics from brassage pomace and the total time to remove water until 10% of moisture content (0.11kg of water/kg of dry solids). The material was gathered in an artisanal brewery in the city of Diamantina (Minas Gerais) and submitted to drying in an oven with air renewal and circulation at 60, 80 and 100ºC for 3h. The drying performance was registered at every 15 minutes. The brassage pomace presented initial moisture of 24.00±0.78%. After the drying process, the final moisture was 10.94±0.32% for 60°C, 5.52±0.67% for 80°C and 2.70±0.23% for 100°C. The drying rate at the critical moisture level was 0.12, 0.22 and 0.29 kg of H2O/s.m2 for 60, 80 and 100ºC, respectively. The drying curves obtained for the brassage pomace resulted in a second-order mathematical model with a regression coefficient of 0.9995 (60ºC), 0.9989 (80ºC) and 0.9978 (100ºC). The time needed for drying in order to reach a maximum moisture content of 10% was 2.91h (60ºC), 1.57h (80ºC) and 0.99h (100ºC). There was observed that the brassage pomace is a material with ease dehydration and that the temperature of 80ºC was effectively better, but represented in an increase of 88.33% in drying rate relating to 60ºC, while the temperature of 100ºC showed an increase of only 31.80% higher than 80ºC, resulting in a higher energy consumption. Similar behavior was observed for drying time, which was 46.05% lower between the temperatures of 60 and 80ºC, while the difference between 80 and 100ºC was only 36.94% lower.