Applied Thermal Engineering 54 (2013) 264e271

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Simulation of heat and mass transfer of cocoa beans under stepwise

drying conditions in a heat pump dryer
C.L. Hii a, *, C.L. Law a,1, M.C. Law b, 2
a
b

Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering and Science, Curtin University, Miri Campus, CDT 250, 98009 Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia

h i g h l i g h t s
< Heat and mass transfer analyses were carried out using a 3-D cocoa bean model under stepwise drying condition.
< Results showed good agreement between the experimental and predicted data.
< Shrinkage could be insignicant in the model due to the mild drying conditions.

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 19 September 2012
Accepted 6 February 2013
Available online 17 February 2013

The present study investigated the kinetics of heat pump drying of cocoa beans under stepwise drying
conditions and the heat and mass transfer analysis carried out using 3-D computer simulation. The
fermented cocoa beans were subject to drying at constant temperature (56
C), step up temperature
(30.7
Ce43.6
Ce56.9
C) and step down temperature (54.9
Ce43.9
C) drying proles. Shrinkage factor
was incorporated into the heat and mass transfer models. Simulation results showed that the mean
relative errors determined ranged from 3.1% to 12.1% in the predicted moisture ratio proles in both
models with and without shrinkage factor. In the bean temperature proles, results showed excellent
agreement between the predicted and experimental data with mean relative errors less than 5%. The
present study showed that shrinkage played a lesser role in the analysis due to the small shrinkage ratio
observed before and after drying.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Cocoa
Drying
Heat transfer
Mass transfer
Simulation

1. Introduction
1.1. Cocoa
Cocoa beans are mainly used in the manufacturing of chocolate
confectionery and beverage products due to its unique chocolaty
taste and colour. Some semi-nished products are produced during
cocoa processing in the form of cocoa powder, cocoa butter and
cocoa liquor [1]. Other commercial usage of cocoa can also be found
in the manufacturing of pharmaceutical, cosmetics and toiletries
products. Currently, the world production of cocoa beans is mostly
concentrated in the West African countries (2.8 million tonne) and
South East Asia (0.6 million tonne) based on the 2011e12 cocoa
market outlook [2].
The processing of cocoa beans begins with the harvesting of the
fully matured cocoa fruits botanically known as Theobroma cacao L
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 60389248000; fax: 60389248017.
E-mail address: Ching-Lik.Hii@nottingham.edu.my (C.L. Hii).
1
Tel.: 60389248000; fax: 60389248017.
2
Tel.: 6085443824; fax: 6085443838.
1359-4311/$ e see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2013.02.010

(family sterculiaceae). The cocoa fruits are usually oval in shape and
measure between 150 and 300 mm long. Inside the fruit, there are
about 30e40 cocoa beans that are covered with a whitish layer of
sweet mucilaginous pulps [3]. Each bean consists of an inner
cotyledon and outer testa layer that stay intact to each other (Fig. 1).
The fresh cocoa beans need to be fermented for 5e7 days inside a
wooden box or by heaping on the ground. Upon fermentation, the
beans are dried to the desirable moisture content at 7% dry basis for
safe storage. Conventionally, sun and hot air drying are the two
main techniques used by cocoa farmers. Various drawbacks are
associated with sun drying such as unpredictable weather pattern,
labour intensive, prolonged drying duration, low production rate
and product spoilage [4]. Meanwhile, the high energy cost, low
thermal efciency and inferior avour quality are usually associated with hot air drying [5e8].
1.2. Cocoa processing studies
Various studies have been carried out in the past to improve
the quality of cocoa beans via fermentation and drying. Quality

C.L. Hii et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 54 (2013) 264e271

Nomenclature
Cp
CD
Deff
E
EMC
H
ht
hm
k
MR
N
NS
Nu
Pr
R

heat capacity (J/(kg K))

constant temperature drying
effective diffusivity (m2/s)
mean relative error (%)
condition at equilibrium moisture content (g H2O/g dry
solid)
enthalpy of heat formation (J/mol)
heat transfer coefcient (W/(m2 K))
mass transfer coefcient (m/s)
thermal conductivity (W/(m.K))
moisture ratio (dimensionless)
number of data points
without shrinkage
Nusselt number (dimensionless)
Prandtl number (dimensionless)
Universal gas constant (8.314 J/(mol.K))

improvement have been reported for cocoa beans fermented using pod storage [9], bean spreading [10], pulp pressing [11] and
shallow box method [12]. In terms of drying, established studies
have been reported in the area of sun, solar and articial drying [3,8,13]. Sun drying is best known to produce good quality
beans due to the mild drying condition that enables sufcient
avour development to occur. Sun dried beans are usually high in
cocoa avour and low in acidity which is ideal in chocolate
manufacturing [7].
In areas where the harvesting season coincides with the rainy
season, most farmers will use hot air dryer whereby heated air is
generated from a wood red burner for drying. However, the high
drying temperature (>60
C) and fast drying rates are not conducive for avour development and retains excessive amount of acids
inside the cocoa cotyledon due to insufcient acids evaporation. As
a result, the dried beans are often lack in cocoa avour, highly acidic
and sometimes even contaminated with smoky odour due to
leakage of smoke from the burner [5].
Studies have been attempted by researchers to overcome these
issues by using ambient air drying [14], improved solar drying
[15,16] and heat pump drying [17e19]. However, ambient air drying
operates under slow drying rates while solar drying suffers from
inconsistent sunshine hours and temperature uctuation. In an
attempt to introduce non-conventional drying technique, heat
pump drying was used and superior product quality could be
achieved which is comparable to the Ghanaian reference sample
[17,18]. The dryer operates under dehumidied air condition which
is more efcient compared to ambient air drying and also smoke
free as wood red furnace is not used at all to generate hot air.

Fig. 1. Cross sectional view of a fresh cocoa bean.

RHair
Re
S
Sh
Sc
SD
SP
T
Text
Tair
t
V
Vo
Vair
X
Xo
Xe

265

Air relative humidity (%)

Reynolds number (dimensionless)
with shrinkage
Sherwood number (dimensionless)
Schmidt number (dimensionless)
step down temperature drying
step up temperature drying
product temperature (
C)
external air temperature (
C)
air temperature (
C)
time (s)
bean volume (m3)
Initial bean volume (m3)
Air velocity (m/s)
moisture content (g H2O/g dry solid)
initial moisture content (g H2O/g dry solid)
equilibrium moisture content (g H2O/g dry solid)
density (kg/m3)

1.3. Heat pump drying

The removal of moisture from food materials via drying is an
energy intensive process due to the high latent heat of evaporation
of water. Energy usage could range from 27% to 70% of the total
energy cost during drying [20]. The thermal efciency of hot air
cocoa dryers is typically in the range of 9%e27% for natural convection dryers and 21%e40% for forced convection dryers [5]. In
many cases, the designs of hot air cocoa dryers are still very crude
even until now, which results in such low thermal efciency values.
Many studies have been carried out to improve the efciency of
hot air drying which leads to the development of heat pump dryer
[21,22]. Heat pump dryer operates based on the concept of a
refrigeration cycle and exchanges heat with the drying air that
passes through the condenser (air heating) and evaporator (air
cooling). It has several inherent advantages such as the ability to
dry at dehumidied conditions, recovery of latent and sensible heat
of water evaporation, improvement in product quality (colour,
texture and appearance) and most importantly, the ability to preserve heat sensitive bioactive ingredients [18,21,22]. With these
advantages, there should be no question why this technique cannot
be applied to improve the quality of cocoa beans especially the
cocoa avour.

1.4. Heat and mass transfer studies

Several studies on heat and mass transfer of cocoa drying had
been carried out by Nganhou et al. [23], Daud et al. [24], Kyi et al.
[25], Garcia-Alamillia et al. [26] and Pramo et al. [27]. Nganhou
et al. [23] assumed cocoa bean as a two-phase granular porous
medium which described the solid phase (water dry material)
and gaseous phase (air water vapour) within the bean. Daud et al.
[24] used Luikovs equations by taking into account the presence of
the nib and testa layer in the simulation. Kyi et al. [25] incorporated
a chemical reaction model based on the destruction of polyphenols
using Luikovs equations. The model was able to predict a pseudorst order reaction model for the polyphenols degradation process.
Garca-Alamilla et al. [26] and Pramo et al. [27] carried out the
analyses by incorporating the acidity kinetic in the heat and mass
transfer model, except that Pramo et al. [27] investigated the effect
of drying with and without the testa layer. In all the above studies,

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C.L. Hii et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 54 (2013) 264e271

drying treatments were mostly carried out by using hot air under
constant temperature condition.
2. Research statement and objectives
The present study is the continuation of the product quality and
kinetic studies previously reported by the authors [17e19]. Studies
on heat and mass transfer are crucial especially in dryer design to
determine the effect of various drying parameters on efciency,
cost and degradation of important product quality attributes
[28,29]. Literature studies mainly reported the use of hot air drying
under constant temperature proles in quality improvement and
modelling [23e27]. Therefore, the present study complement this
area of research with aims to simulate the step-wise drying proles
in three dimensional ellipsoidal body using a non-conventional
(heat pump) dryer at dehumidied air conditions. To date, such
studies are relatively new in the cocoa industry and have not been
reported elsewhere except from the authors [17e19].
3. Materials and methods
Fig. 3. Schematic view of the air circulation inside the dryer.

3.1. Bean samples

Fresh and disease free cocoa beans were obtained from Malaysian Cocoa Board (Jengka, Malaysia). About 25 kg of the beans were
fermented inside a wooden box (0.3 m  0.3 m  0.3 m) for ve
days with manual turning every two days to ensure uniformity
according to Hii and Tukimon [30].
3.2. Heat pump dryer
A laboratory scale prototype was fabricated by I-Lab Ptd. Ltd.
(Selangor, Malaysia) for experimentation. The overall dimension of
the dryer measured 2.3 m (length)  1 m (width)  2.1 m (height).
Fig. 2 shows the schematic diagram of the dryer which consists of
the heat pump, heat exchanger and drying loops. Two drying
chambers (0.33 m  0.33 m  1 m each) were tted into the dryer

but only one chamber was made active for experimentation. The
heat exchanger used water as heat transfer medium and absorbed
heat from the high pressure refrigerant. In a typical drying operation (Fig. 3), the moisture laden air discharged from the drying
chamber was dehumidied by the evaporator and later preheated
by the heat exchanger and pre-heater before entering into the
drying chamber via a mechanical blower. Upon drying, the moisture laden air entered the evaporator and the cycle continued. The
dehumidied air condition was regulated using programmable
controller to maintain the air temperature and relative humidity
inside the drying chamber. Table 1 shows the technical specications of some of the key components in the dryer.
3.3. Drying procedure
Table 2 shows the drying procedure used in the trials. In all
experiments, the bean samples (0.7 kg) were placed on a product
tray (0.28 m  0.28 m) made with stainless steel wire mesh.
Convective airow (4 m/s) was supplied in direction perpendicular
to the base of the product tray. The beans were dried until equilibrium moisture content (EMC), a state where no further change in
weight readings were observed towards the end of drying.
3.4. Moisture content
The moisture content (dry basis) of the cocoa beans (X) was
determined hourly based on the weight of the sample as according
to Hii et al. [31]. Dry solid weight was determined by placing the
samples inside the oven at 105
C for at least 24 h. Graphically, the

Table 1
Technical specication of key components in the dryer.

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the heat pump dryer prototype.

Item

Specications

Compressor for heat pump

Refrigerant
Blower
Water pump (heat exchanger side)
Heater
Adjustable temperature range
(heat pump heater are switched on)
Maximum heater temperature

9.38 kWh
R22
3700 LPM
0.75 kW
2 kW
28
Ce44
C
60
C

C.L. Hii et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 54 (2013) 264e271

The heat (ht) and mass (hm) transfer coefcients can be estimated by the following correlations:

Table 2
Average operating conditions used in the experiments.
Label

Vair (ms1)

Tair (
C)

RHair (%)

Duration of drying

CD
SD

4.6
4.6

SP

4.6

56
54.9
43.9
30.7a
43.6
56.9

14.6
16.2
15.5
60.8
15.1
14.6

Until EMC
First 6 h
Until EMC
24 h
24 h
Until EMC

Drying using ambient air.

moisture content is plotted against drying time in the form of

moisture ratio (MR).

Air temperature and relative humidity inside the chamber were

measured using a data logger (Rotronic, HW3, USA) with accuracy
at 0.8% RH (10e60% RH @23.5
C) and 1.3% RH (60e100% RH
@23.5
C) and air velocity was measured using a digital anemometer (Airow, LCA 30VT, UK) with accuracy at 1% of reading (velocity range 0.25e30 m/s). The sensors from all these measuring
instruments were located below the product tray. Product temperature was measured by inserting a T-type thermocouple (accuracy: 0.7
C @ 21
C) into the product centre that was attached
to a data logger (Hoboware, USA).
3.6. Heat and mass transfer models
Heat transfer is given by the following equation based on the
Fouriers heat conduction model:

vT
V$kVT
vt

(1)

where the bean density (r), heat capacity (Cp) and thermal conductivity (k) are given as functions of bean temperature [18]:

r 0:008T 2 4:7188T 408:42

(2)

Cp 0:1569T 2  102:51T 18806

(3)

k 2  105 T 2  0:0111T 2:1422

(4)

The mass transfer equation developed is given below based on

the Ficks diffusional model:




vX
V$ Deff VX
vt

Nu 2 0:552Re0:53 Pr 1=3

(10)

Sh 2 0:552Re0:53 Sc1=3

(11)

where Nu, Sh, Re, Pr and Sc are the dimensionless parameters

known as Nusselt, Sherwood, Reynolds, Prandtl and Schmidt
numbers.
A certain degree of bean shrinkage was observed during drying.
From Hii et al. [32], shrinkage ratio for cocoa beans is given as:

V
0:0519MR3 0:03MR2 0:0208MR 0:9389
Vo

3.5. Temperature, relative humidity and air velocity

rCp

MR

X  Xe
Xo  Xe

(13)

3.7. Computer simulation

The cocoa bean was modelled as an ellipsoid as shown in Fig. 4.
For grid independent purpose, three different element sizes were
used, each with a total elements of 18807 (coarse), 44515 (normal)
and 63006 (ne). It was found that the moisture simulation results
for these three cases were almost similar. By using ne element as
a baseline, the average percentage difference of coarse case was
1.7% and that of normal case was 0.19%. Thus, it was concluded that
grid independence were achieved in these three cases. For accurate simulation results without incurring excessive computing
cost, the 3-D model was meshed into 44515 tetrahedral elements.
The heat and mass transfer Equations (1) and (2) are solved
simultaneously with the moving mesh problem from Equation
(12). To obtain the velocity of the shrinking cocoa bean surface, the
current bean volume was calculated according to Equation (12)
and it was then divided by the external surface of the cocoa
bean. The time derivative of the resulting parameter was the velocity of the shrinking surface. Equations (1)e(13) are solved using
commercial software, COMSOL Multiphysics (Version 4.1, Comsol,
Sweden). This software implements nite element method to
discretize the equations above. The resulting matrices was solved
using a parallel direct solver, MUMPS (MUltifrontal Massively
Parallel Sparse) [33], which are suitable for both symmetric and
un-symmetric matrices.

where the effective diffusivity (Deff) was developed from the work
by Hii [18].



38000
RT

Deff 12  104 exp

(6)

The boundary conditions at the bean surface are given as:


Ln$kVT H$ Deff VX ht Text  T

(7)




Ln$ Deff VX hm Xe  X

(8)

where the enthalpy of formation of water (H) is dened as:

(9)

(12)

where the moisture ratio (MR) is dened as:

(5)

H 0:0469T 2  13:493T 52202

267

Fig. 4. Ellipsoidal cocoa bean model.

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C.L. Hii et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 54 (2013) 264e271

Fig. 5. Plot of moisture ratio versus drying time under constant temperature drying
condition with shrinkage (S) and without shrinkage (NS).

Fig. 7. Plot of moisture ratio versus drying time under step up temperature drying
condition with shrinkage (S) and without shrinkage (NS).

3.8. Mean relative error

The mean relative error (E) between the experimental and
predicted data was estimated based on the following equation [34].

E%

100 Xn jExperimental value  Predicted valuej

i1
Experimental value
N

(14)

4. Results and discussion

The moisture ratio proles are as shown in Figs. 5e7 for the
constant drying (CD), step up (SP) and step down (SD) conditions,
respectively. The drop in moisture content was the highest at the
initial stage of drying with initial rates ranging from 0.17, 0.48 and
0.49 g H2O/g dry solid, respectively, for CD, SP and SD. The lower
initial rate for SP was due to the lower temperature used (ambient
air at 30.7
C) at the start of drying. Fig. 8 shows the air temperature
proles inside the drying chamber. The temperature was regulated
well below the temperature detrimental to cocoa quality which is
at 60
C [5]. This is to prevent excessive acids entrapment inside the
beans which could cause avour loss due to high acidity [7]. The
effect of these temperature settings in the heat pump dryer on
cocoa bean quality had been reported by Hii et al. [17].

Fig. 6. Plot of moisture ratio versus drying time under step down temperature drying
condition with shrinkage (S) and without shrinkage (NS).

It can be seen that the experimental moisture content proles

(represent by markers) fall exponentially throughout the drying
period. This conforms to the Ficks second law of diffusion where
the analytical solution of the mass transfer process is exponential in
nature [35]. The use of ambient air at the step up treatment was
sufcient to bring the moisture ratio below 0.2 after 24 h of drying,
as compared to SD and CD at much lower moisture ratios of 0.09
and 0.05, respectively, at the same drying duration. It was observed
that the surface of the testa layer was supercially dried due to the
constant airow movement. It is important to remove the surface
moisture as fast as possible to prevent mould growth which is an
undesirable quality attribute [14].
Results obtained from the computer simulation are as shown by
the solid lines in Figs. 5e7 for the moisture ratio proles and
Figs. 9e11 for the bean temperature proles, respectively. Table 3
shows the mean relative error (%E) calculated that ranges from
3.1% to 12.1% in the tted moisture ratio proles.
For the bean temperature proles, all the experimental data
were excellently tted with mean relative error less than 5%
(Table 4). However, in the initial drying period (0e5 h) deviation
was observed between the experimental and predicted data. This

Fig. 8. Plot of air temperature versus drying time for each temperature prole.

C.L. Hii et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 54 (2013) 264e271

Fig. 9. Plot of bean temperature versus drying time under constant temperature
drying condition with shrinkage (S) and without shrinkage (NS).

could be due to model limitations that not all mechanisms of

temperature development had been taken into account especially
at the initial stage i.e. heat transfer resistance (or thermal conductivity) of the testa layer. By visual inspection, the testa resembles a woody skin layer but leathery when moist. Subsequent
moisture removal causes the testa to become brittle and harder,
eventually adhere tightly to the cotyledon. Nevertheless, mean
relative errors calculated were less than or equal to 1% for the rst
5 h of drying (Table 4). Garca-Alamilla et al. [26] reported average
error of less than 5% in their prediction for cocoa bean temperature
within the similar time range.
Under the tested drying conditions, incorporation of bean
shrinkage into the models did not greatly improve the tting between the experimental and predicted data. This could be due to
the mild temperature used in the heat pump dryer which ranged
from ambient temperature to 56
C. Bean shrinkage was observed
only within 10% under these drying conditions. Apart from that, the
effective diffusivity model used was dened as a function of temperature instead of moisture content. In general, temperature
development within the product is quite stable during drying after
the initial heating period and remains quite steady thereafter.
However, moisture content varies from very high level (80%e100%

269

Fig. 11. Plot of bean temperature versus drying time under step up temperature drying
condition with shrinkage (S) and without shrinkage (NS).

Table 3
Mean relative errors computed for the predicted temperature and moisture ratio
data.
Drying condition
CD
%E (bean temperature)
No shrinkage
With shrinkage
%E (moisture ratio)
No shrinkage
With shrinkage

SD

SP

2.1
2.0

2.3
2.2

3.1
3.9

3.1
3.3

12.1
11.0

4.7
6.0

dry basis) to extremely low level at less than 1%. Therefore, the
impact on the effective diffusivity due to moisture content should
be much greater compares to temperature effect and that was not
taken into account in this study.
Figs. 12 and 13shows the typical simulation results in 3-D
visualization for drying under constant temperature drying condition. Product temperature built up reached the drying temperature within 5 h of drying which could be due to the high moisture
content inside the beans which provides a better conductivity effect
for heat transfer. The temperatures between the edge sides and the
centre are almost identical based on the simulated model. In terms
of moisture ratios, it can be seen that even after 5 h of drying there
still exists a large difference between the centre moisture ratio and
those at the edge sides. As drying progresses (about after 10 h), the
difference between these moisture ratios reduces but still at a
percentage difference of almost 82% between the centre and the
edge sides. Several reasons could attribute to these ndings which
could be due to case hardening and moisture hold up at the testa
layer. As drying progresses, the outer testa and the cotyledon layer

Table 4
Mean relative errors computed for the predicted temperature data for the rst 5 h.
Drying condition

Fig. 10. Plot of bean temperature versus drying time under step down temperature
drying condition with shrinkage (S) and without shrinkage (NS).

%E (bean temperature)
No shrinkage
With shrinkage

CD

SD

SP

0.1
0.2

0.4
0.4

1.0
1.0

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C.L. Hii et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 54 (2013) 264e271

studies complement the current area of cocoa drying research with

aims to simulate the step-wise drying proles in 3-D ellipsoidal
body. Results showed reasonably good agreement between the
experimental and predicted data in the moisture ratio and bean
temperature proles. No signicant improvement was observed
when shrinkage factor was incorporated into the model. This could
be due to the less signicant shrinkage ratios under the mild drying
conditions used coupled with the diffusivity model which was only
related to temperature and not moisture content. Simulation shows
that temperature development within the beans established at a
much faster rate compare to the reduction in moisture content
during drying. Further studies can be carried out by improving the
diffusivity model namely to include the presence of the testa and
cotyledon layers in modelling.
Acknowledgements
The study was supported by the Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia (e-Science project no.
05-02-12-SF0014).
References

Fig. 12. Simulated moisture ratio proles.

Fig. 13. Simulated temperature proles.

next to it were severely dried and this resulted in case hardening.

Thus, the diffusion path of the moisture from the inner vicinity
towards the edge of the testa was impeded due to this harden layer.
As a result, the diffused moisture was being held at the centre and
only very small amount of moisture was able to diffuse out to the
testa surface due to the low effective diffusivity at this stage.
For future studies, some improvements in the current model can
be made by incorporating the diffusivity model as a function of
moisture content or combined function of moisture content and
temperature. This can be further improved by taking into account
the diffusivity difference between the testa and cotyledon layers as
the testa layer has a different cellular structure compares to the
cotyledon. Such difference could result in different degree of drying
as the testa layer usually dries faster compare to the cotyledon
[19,27].
5. Conclusion
The present study reported the heat and mass transfer analyses
carried out for cocoa beans dried inside a heat pump dryer. The

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