Análise e simulação da produção de café descafeinado utilizando o software DWSIM

Abstract

With the increase in consumption of decaffeinated coffee by people with some type of chronic illness or by the growing percentage of young people and adults in search of a healthier lifestyle, the coffee industry has included decaffeinated coffee in its catalog to meet this new profile. of consumer. However, the caffeine removal techniques employed affected the main characteristics of the coffee, making it a low-quality and costly product. Considering that today in Brazil there are few decaffeination industries, the present work aims to elaborate an industrial project for decaffeination of green coffee beans using supercritical CO2 as a caffeine extracting solvent, through simulation in the DWSIM software, as well as verify the economic feasibility of implementing this project. In the simulation of the supercritical extraction plant, the use of 1000g of green coffee fed in batch was considered, with a current of supercritical CO2 being passed at a flow rate of 0.126Kg/h for 1 hour. The necessary equipment for the installation of the plant was selected, reaching an initial investment of R$ 100,000.00 and a production cost of R$ 665,000.00. The project proved to be viable due to its Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return results, factors that influence the success of the project.