Comparative Analysis of Thermal Properties of Two Varieties of Periwinkle Relevant to Its Processing Equipment Design

This study was conducted to investigate and compare the thermal properties of two varieties: Tympanotonus fuscatus and Pachymelania aurita of Periwinkle in Nigeria. The thermal properties, namely; specific heat capacity,Cp, thermal conductivity, k, thermal diffusity,α, thermal absorptivity, γ and thermal effusivity, ∈ of Periwinkle samples were determined. The mean thermal conductivity of T. fuscatus was found to be 0.085±0.00015 W/m.K at temperatures of 308 – 373 K, while that of P. aurita was 0.0952±0.00056 W/m.K at the same temperature range.The average specific heat capacity value of T. fuscatus was found to be 2403.663±3.4379 J/kg.K at temperature of 308 – 373 K lower than that of P. aurita having a mean value of 2832.314±1.7385 J/kg.K at the same temperature. The mean thermal diffisivity of T. fuscatus was found to be 2.6553×10-8 m2/s while that of P. aurita was found to be 5.6790×10-8 m2/s. The average values for thermal absorptivity and effusivity of T. fuscatus and P. aurita were obtained as 81.085m-1; 525.084 W.s1/2/m2K and 55.441 m-1; 396.952 W.s1/2/m2K, respectively. The results shown that average thermal absorptivity and effusivity values were higher in T. fuscatus than P. aurita. A Tukey pairwise comparison analysis carried out on the mean values of these thermal properties of T. fuscatus and P. aurita revealed that there is statistically significant difference at α<5% between the thermal properties of the two varieties of periwinkle samples. These data would help us in predicting and controlling the heat flux during the design of periwinkle processing equipment