DISEÑO PRELIMINAR DE UNA PLANTA PILOTO PARA LA OBTENCIÓN DE SIROPE A PARTIR DE ALGARROBA

Abstract

Carob is a fruit with multiple uses as a raw material. Due to the high content of antioxidant substances in the pulp, and its water absorption capacity, numerous investigations have been carried out with respect to obtaining natural food preservatives. In fact, its major component, sucrose, offers a wide range of possibilities in terms of obtaining sweetening products (syrup) for human consumption.

In this work the preliminary design of a pilot plant for production of syrup from carob’s pulp is presented. The process is composed of five steps: conditioning of the raw material, solid-liquid extraction, purification and concentration of extract, and conditioning of the final product. As the extraction is the most important phase, its design is based on solid-liquid extraction laboratory experiments carried out in order to study the influence of some variables such as particle size and pH. The design of the rest of the phases has been based on the information gathered from existing bibliography about carob’s components extraction.