Morphological characterization with image analysis of cocoa beverage powder agglomerated with steam

Abstract

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.

Microencapsulation of grape seed oil by spray drying

“…The microspheres formulated with GA and GA/MD presented a small mean particle size (Table 1), as expected for spray-dried powder. Such a result negatively affects the flowability and dissolution properties of a particulate system (Vissotto et al, 2014;Hogekamp & Schubert, 2003). On addition, smaller particles have a higher total surface area (Table 1); as a consequence, there are a great affinity for moisture, leading to powder caking (Hogekamp & Schubert, 2003), and amount of surface oil available for oxidation.…”

Diseño y construcción de una secadora automática para cacao a base de aire caliente tipo rotatorio para una capacidad de 500 kg

“…Para realizar el secado se necesita del calor necesario dentro del cilindro. (ZABALA, 2012) Las propiedades del aire se determinan mediante el uso del software (EES), en la Tabla 4 y la Tabla 5 se muestran las propiedades al inicio y final del proceso de secado.…”

Influence of sucrose substitutes and agglomeration on volatile compounds in powdered cocoa beverages

“…There are also some more complex methods of obtaining cocoa beverages. Such methods as agglomeration and coating allow manufacturing an instant product with specific reconstitution properties (Vissotto et al 2014;Ostrowska-Ligęza and Lenart 2015).…”