Proposta de scale - up de processo produtivo de polpa de acerola congelada em uma cooperativa agrícola de Maranguape - CE

Abstract

The cooperative model, since its beginnings in the 17th century, resigns a group of people in a kind of society to establish economic organization and balance between common interests. Agricultural cooperatives are based on the visibility of rural producers, being an extension between the field and the market. Among the diverse current crops in Ceará soil, acerola is one of the most relevant. The existence of an agricultural cooperative within a city brings benefits to local producers, especially when there is a fruit processing unit. Many of these existing processing units lack adequate equipment, a regular structure for the entire organization of the processes, and a technical quality assurance control, in addition to a limitation on the volume produced. Given this situation, the present work aimed to make improvements in the production process of frozen acerola pulp in an agricultural cooperative located in the city of Maranguape - CE, expanding its production capacity through a scale-up proposal. In the development of this work, the mass balance was elaborated for a larger production scale, the feasibility of the renovation of the equipment, and the process flowchart, in addition to the scaling of two cold chambers. A production process was designed so that the daily production of pure frozen acerola pulp would meet the demand of 400 kg of fresh acerola, representing four times the current average of the cooperative, with the daily receipt of the fruit at room temperature, at 33ºC and the possibility of its storage in a refrigeration chamber, with a temperature of 5ºC. The pulp production process, using equipment suited to the planning demand, would end up in the packaging of the pulp in a frozen storage chamber, with a temperature of -20ºC, all these improvements being proposed based on a future use for other products worked on by the same cooperative. The proposal proved to be viable from a structural, logistical and objective point of view, due to the processes to be carried out, the location and demand.