Justification of the design parameters of the vacuum press

One of the promising areas for improving the quality of grape pulp pressing is the use of vacuum presses, which allow obtaining high quality juice. It is shown that the pressing of raw materials in vacuum presses can significantly reduce the damage to the pulp and bones, practically eliminates the contact of the pulp and the resulting juice with atmospheric oxygen, providing the possibility of obtaining high-quality products. The results of theoretical studies are presented, which allow to substantiate the design parameters of the pressing chamber, taking into account the required productivity of the press, which depends on the amount of wort released per pressing cycle. Based on the materials of the article, the pressing cycle is presented from the time spent on loading the pulp into the pressing chamber, directly on the pressing process itself and unloading the pressed pulp. It has been established that the duration of loading and unloading the press depends on the volume of the pressing chamber, the time spent on loading a unit volume of the feedstock and unloading the pressed pulp. According to the given data, in the process of pulp compression in the pressing chamber, the must is released, due to which its volume decreases from the maximum value to the minimum. This change is determined by the degree of extraction. The degree of extraction of the pulp depends on its physical and mechanical properties and pressing pressure. Pulp properties are taken into account by the coefficient of relative compressibility and porosity coefficient. Dependences were obtained to determine the degree of compaction of the pulp skeleton in the pressing chamber at a constant pressing pressure and its stepwise change. Based on the theoretical studies carried out, dependences were obtained that allow determining the diameter and height of the pressing chamber in accordance with the required throughput of the proposed press