Nowadays, the decaffeination of coffee takes place in food manufacturing facilities, since there are many consumers who want to monitor the amount of coffee intake for health reasons. Decaffeination processes remove the caffeine from the beans at certain amount of concentration according to the process choice. The aim of this project is to design a plant for production of 1 metric ton per hour of decaffeinated coffee with caffeine concentration of 3%. The technology selected for the design is a supercritical CO2 extraction. The main units in the process are the extraction vessel, separator and heat exchanger. The detailed design for each unit in the process including equipment sizing and cost estimation will be established. Also, the Hazard and Operability study (HAZOP) will be studied to identify and evaluate the problems that may cause a risk to the process equipment's. Finally, the environmental and safety issues will be discussed.

 

 

Executive summary