Pretreatment of Palm Fruit by Using a Conveyor Belt Microwave Prototype

Authors

  • Kritsada Puangsuwan Prince of Songkla University, Surat Thani Campus
  • Kiattisak Wongsopanakul Prince of Songkla University
  • Chakrit Tongurai Prince of Songkla University
  • Sittiporn Channumsin Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), Thailand
  • Suwat Sreesawet Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), Thailand
  • Mitchai Chongcheawchamnan Prince of Songkla University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4186/ej.2021.25.1.33

Keywords:

pretreatment, microwave drying, oil palm, free fatty acids

Abstract

This paper presents a microwave drying prototype, which is a conveyor belt design for oil palm pretreatment. The prototype consists of four 800 W magnetrons launching electromagnetic energy to the rectangular waveguide cavity. Palm fruit was fed in the cavity by the conveyor belt and pretreated in the cavity. The cavity size was designed optimally to ensure that temperature distribution in the palm fruit is uniform. Another conveyor belt is applied to the cavity output to feed out the pretreated fruit. Two corrugated waveguide filters were installed at the conveyor belt ends to suppress the microwave leakage. Three hundred sixty palm fruit were pretreated to prove the prototype concept. From the experiment results, the prototype heated palm fruit to the temperature required for inhibiting lipase enzyme within 120 seconds. It is found that free fatty acids in the treated palm fruit was well below 2% even 1 week storage.

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Author Biographies

Kritsada Puangsuwan

Faculty of Science and Industrial Technology, Prince of Songkla University, Surat Thani Campus, Mueang, Surat Thani 84000, Thailand

Kiattisak Wongsopanakul

Faculty of Engineering, Prince of Songkla University, Hatyai, Songkhla 90112, Thailand

Chakrit Tongurai

Faculty of Engineering, Prince of Songkla University, Hatyai, Songkhla 90112, Thailand

Sittiporn Channumsin

Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), Chonburi 20230, Thailand

Suwat Sreesawet

Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), Chonburi 20230, Thailand

Mitchai Chongcheawchamnan

Faculty of Engineering, Prince of Songkla University, Hatyai, Songkhla 90112, Thailand

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Published In
Vol 25 No 1, Jan 31, 2021
How to Cite
[1]
K. Puangsuwan, K. Wongsopanakul, C. . Tongurai, S. . Channumsin, S. Sreesawet, and M. Chongcheawchamnan, “Pretreatment of Palm Fruit by Using a Conveyor Belt Microwave Prototype”, Eng. J., vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 33-41, Jan. 2021.

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