Caracterização física e mecânica do fruto da macaúba.

Abstract

Macauba is a palm tree found in most of the Brazilian territory. The spherical fruit presents yellowish pulp and oleaginous kernel, both used for oil extraction. In spite of its high commercial value, the process of peeling of the fruit is handmade, causing pulp and kernel losses. Therefore, the knowledge of physical and mechanical properties of the fruit is necessary to design appropriate handling equipments. In this work, some physical and mechanical properties of the macauba fruit were measured, such as equivalent diameter, apparent density, mass composition, pulp moisture contend, thickness and resistance of the skin, the latter using the rupture force and deformation. The values of equivalent diameter, apparent density, thickness of the skin, mass of the nuts, deformation and specific deformation in the rupture presented low variation coefficient. The physical properties analysed suggest uniformity of the fruits. The little variability of the deformation and specific deformation parameters suggests that the mechanical peeling can be executed based on the deformation. Future studies on mechanical resistance of the nut will contribute to a more complete characterization of the fruit.