Project Details

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Design of an avocado pomace dryer

Company: Partners in Food Solutions

Major(s):
Primary: ME
Secondary: EE
Optional: IE, MATSE

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: NO

Partners in Food Solutions is working with several avocado processors in Africa supporting them with Technical and Business advisory services. Several of these processors produce avocado oil. In production of avocado oil, there is generation of upwards of 90% pomace based on the raw material volume. This pomace includes, avocado skins, avocado seeds and the fresh that remains after the oil is extracted. Many processors face the challenge of handling this wet pomace due to the bulkiness and perishability. PFS would like to explore the design of a dryer that could be scaled up to help the processors dehydrate the pomace efficiently and effectively to reduce the moisture to less than 10% so that it can be stored without spoilage and upcycled to other products. The objective of this project will be to design a dryer that can dry 50 kg of the pomace at a time with the aim of assessing the technical and commercial viability of scaling this up to commercial scale.