Uma contribuição ao estudo da guapeva (Pouteria Gardneriana Radlk): procedimento experimental, modelagem matemática e pós-processamento

Abstract

The cerrado is configured with one of largest biomes in terms of representativeness and diversity in Brazilian territory. A wide variety of fruits and that presents applicability in different areas, as agriculture and medicine, can be found. Among these, the guapeva presents a large potential due to sweet taste, nutritional and bioactive, and applications in medicine field. Despite these characteristics, few studies considering this fruit can be found in the literature. In this contribution, this work aims to contribute in study of guapeva in terms of drying operation and characterization of produced flour with the bark of this fruit. For this purpose, a tunnel type dryer, in which experiments are performed to determine the parameters associated with the guapeva drying kinetic and parameters associated with the phenomenological model (effective moisture diffusivity and effective thermal conductivity). In this case, two inverse problems were proposed and solved by using the Differential Evolution algorithm. From the results obtained it was possible to observe a good concordance between the experimental and predicted results. In relation to physical-chemical analysis of the flour produced, it was possible to observe a good nutritional quality in comparison with other commercial flours. In this context, the product resulting from the drying process is configured as an alternative, from the nutritional point of view, to traditional products found in market.