LAUSR

Abstract The objective of this article was to determine local thermal diffusivity of green coconut pulp stored in a parallelepiped-shaped metallic container during heating in a thermal treatment. A thermocouple was placed in the center of the container with the product, initially at 25.8 °C, and then the set was dipped in a water bath at 64.85 °C. The temperature over time was recorded in a txt file, making it possible to determine the parameters of a function that represents the thermal diffusivity, using an optimization technique, which also required a three-dimensional numerical solution of the heat conduction equation. Among the functions tested to represent thermal diffusivity as a function of local temperature, the best result was obtained with the hyperbolic cosine, with chi-square and determination coefficient of 0.3188 and 0.99998, respectively. Thus, it was possible to establish the time required to safely interrupt a new heating process during another heat treatment, with a simple simulation, without the need for a new experiment.