One worldwide-recognised brand in the field of agroindustry manufactures the
industrial chocolate peanut snack W&W's in three steps. Initially, the peanuts are
sieved in order to remove broken grains (B); then, the unbroken peanuts (P) are
driven to the next unit where are first roasted and then covered with chocolate
(C). Following, the third step consists of a crusting operation, where each piece is
covered with a layer of a sugar (S) - water (W) mixture and then is dried. The
scheme below shows the process.
Qkg/h
0.590 kg P/kg
0.410 kg B/kg
Sieving
Qkg Bih
Qkg P/h
Qkg C/h
Roasting
&
Coating
Qkg/h
w.kg C/kg
w kg P/kg
Qkg/h
w.kg Cikg
wkg P/kg
Qkg/h
0.660 kg S/kg
0.340 kg W/kg
Crusting
Qkg W/h
Qkg/h
0.290 kg C/kg
0.430 kg P/kg
0.280 kg S/kg
The stream Qe is made of low quality pieces that cannot be commercialised so it
keeps the same composition as the product sent to crusting unit. In average, there
are 10 kg of satisfactorily coated peanuts per each kg of rejected peanuts. If the
production of commercial W&W's is stated to be 1000.0 kg/h, find the mass
flowrate and compositions of the rest of streams, this is, all feeds (Q₁, Q4 and Q₂)
and exits (Q3, Q6, Qs and Q9). Assume that the process operates in steady state.
Fig: 1