Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Article Title: Design of a Cooling System for a Food Extruder
by Folasayo Fayose, Samuel Adejuyigbe, Babatope Alabadan, Adesoji Olaniyan, Theophilus Babalola, Sunday Ogunjimi, Oluwafemi Aladejebi, Bayode Olorunfemi

Abstract:
Burning and undesirable puffing of extruded products has proven to be a major challenge causing serious economic loss during extrusion. This experience automatically affects adversely the quality of the food being processed. Also, it may be necessary to introduce heat through the barrel walls to reduce the viscosity of extruded products during extrusion to improve the performance of the extruder. This project is borne out of need to control the heat generated by frictional dissipation of a cooking extruder. Also, different crops develop different extrusion heat and the rate at which heat is generated for each crop differs. In this report, the design of the components of the cooling system which is the first phase of the heat control system is reported. The highest temperature attained by the extruder through vicious dissipation at 150rpm was 150oC and the desired temperature to cool the products to was 52oC. The components of the heat control system include radiator with fan, water jacket, reservoir, water pump, hose and distribution pipes and thermostat. The study employed the principle of counter flow heat exchanger for the water jacket. The total undesirable heat generated by the extruder to be cooled was 1.36 kJ/s. The overall heat coefficient was calculated to be 1.576 kW/m2 K. The effective area of the water jacket was calculated to be 0.2278m2 while the volumetric flow rate was 0.0036m/s.With an available pump of maximum head 35m, the total height of the radiator-stand to allow cooling water from the radiator to flow by gravity at 0.04196 m3/s was calculated to be 1. From above calculations, a single row radiator of size 60cm x 42cm x2.5cm with a single fan 12V 800 W was selected for the cooling system. The total cost of production for the cooling system is estimated to be One hundred, fifty two thousand, three hundred and fifty Naira only. By the time this work is completed, a data on heat control system of different extruded products which would be usefull in thermal food processing would have been provided for use in the study area.

Keywords: extrusion, cassava flour, heat control, radiator, cooling system

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