Experimental investigation of sugar extraction from carob by Taguchi method

The total population in the world is constantly increasing day by day. With the effect of this increment, people have been having difficulties in accessing healthy foods due to the environmental pollution problem caused by the people in the last hundred years and the negative effects on the world caused by global warming. As these problems increase day by day, it has become inevitable to conduct research on nature protection, environmental pollution, and healthy life. The importance of studies on global warming will gain serious meaning in the near future. In parallel with this, the importance of eco-friendly products produced with less water and energy is another matter that cannot be ignored. Carob fruit, which is growing in our country and has positive effects on the human body thanks to its beneficial minerals including antioxidants, is one of the main eco-friendly products that should be evaluated economically. Besides the carob is rich in antioxidants, it has active substances having the immunity supportive and also the other mentioned factors. Thus, it has often been preferred on the production of carob molasses as well. There are many methods for the production of molasses from fruits like pressing method and extraction method. While the pressing method, which is frequently preferred in the molasses production of soft fruits such as grapes and mulberries, since it is not possible to apply on hard fruits such as carob, is preferred the extraction method. The efficiency of the extraction varies according to parameters such as operating temperature, extraction time and amount of solvent etc. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of temperature and amount of solvent on extraction. In this study, the effect of these two parameters on extraction was investigated experimentally. The Arrhenius approximation was used for the effect of temperature on the mass transfer coefficient. The activation energy was obtained for the sugar extraction of the carob.