Evaluation of the behavior of coffee stored in cooled and natural environments

The market value of coffee is strongly influenced by loss of quality, which makes storage one of the main steps in the entire production chain. The finite element method (FEM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are numerical and computational techniques that facilitate the simulation of agricultural product storage systems. Computational modeling satisfactorily represents real experimentation, simplifies decision-making, and reduces costs. This study aimed to analyze mocha coffee storage for 6 months in a cooled environment with temperatures between 15 and 18 °C and in a natural environment. The water content, bulk density, specific heat, thermal conductivity, and thermal diffusivity were determined and colorimetry and sensory analysis were applied to compare initial and final samples of the product after storage. It was found that the water content and specific heat were the only properties that presented significant changes. Through sensory analysis, it was observed that the quality of the coffee was the same for both systems. A computational model was developed to simulate the heat transfer process during storage. The comparison of the simulation results with the experimental results for the temperature distribution in the grain mass showed overall mean relative errors of 2.34% for the natural environment and 5.74% for the cooled environment.