a b s t r a c tThe objective of this research was to evaluate the effects of the steam agglomeration process variables on the characteristics of cocoa beverage powders. A pilot scale agglomerator was used in the tests. For the cocoa beverage powder formulated with granulated sugar, most common commercial product, the increase in solids feed rate (400-700 g/min) led to a decrease in the mean particle diameter (400 g/min -564.70 lm, 700 g/min -438.40 lm) and an increase in the dryer rotation (12-52 rpm) led to an increase in the product moisture (12 rpm -1.52% w.b., 52 rpm -1.88% w.b.). The changing from 1.0 Â 10 2 to 1.8 Â 10 2 kPa of the vapor pressure resulted in an increase in moisture of the cocoa beverage powder (1.0 Â 10 2 kPa -1.46% w.b., 1.8 Â 10 2 kPa -1.94% w.b.) and the intensification of the yellow color of the product (1.0 Â 10 2 kPa -14.51, 1.8 Â 10 2 kPa -15.17).

In this study, the morphological characteristics of cocoa beverage powder granules under minimal, average, and maximal process conditions of a steam agglomerator were studied. a stereoscopic microscope coupled to a digital camera was used for the morphological analysis. The images were analyzed to obtain shape and size descriptors. aiming to evaluate the descriptors, 150 particles were analyzed. The results showed that there was no difference between the shape descriptors -compacity, circularity, roughness, and aspect ratio -in the operating conditions evaluated. It was observed that the cocoa beverage powder granules are elongated in shape. The size descriptors, area, perimeter, perimeter of convex bounding polygon, minimal and maximal Feret diameter, were different in the process conditions for the granules of size above 600 μm. as for the minimal process conditions, especially due to low solid feed rates, there is an increase in the size descriptor values. In addition, under the minimum process conditions, in which there is low solid feed rate (400g/min) for a steam pressure of 1.0 bar, it was obtained a good granular condition with retention of 81.1% of granules on sieves with aperture size between 300 and 1190 µm.