Figure 9 – Final solid fat content for all 5 cases: comparison
between experiment (blue, left) and simulation (purple, right).
Figure 9 illustrates that the (average) eventual solid fat content found
in the simulations is in very good agreement with the experimental data,
certainly given the uncertainty (represented by the error bars) in both
experiments and simulations. The error bars of the simulations are based
on differences found in simulations with different sets of calibration
coefficients, such as in Figures 5 and 6. The experimental uncertainty
is once more clear from the different values of the solid fat content of
the similar tests #3 and #4: test #4 was stopped earlier than #3 and
therefore should contain more oil indeed (as in the simulations), while
this was not observed in the tests. In test #5, the average solid fat
content was predicted too high while the outflow simulation (see Figure
7) was very well predicted.
Finally, we checked whether the simulation reproduces the solid fat
profile in the eventual filter cake as found in the pilot-plant tests.
To this end, the filter cake produced in test #2 was removed from the
filter chamber and sliced with the help of an egg slicer into five
layers of approximately equal thickness. This is a tedious operation, as
oil dripped on the cake during removal and cutting was difficult, with
the cake easily crumbling and melting during handling. The solid fat
content of ten samples out of each slice was measured and averaged to
construct