Objective
Chocolate quality is highly dependent on a stage of the manufacturing process known as tempering. Tempering is critical for reducing processing failures and ensuring a quality end product. Incorrect tempering makes the chocolate become dull, susceptible to fat bloom, soft in texture and ‘warm’ in the mouth, as well as difficult to demould with a greater probability of mould marks on the surface. Tempering is a highly complex process, affected by many raw material and processing factors, whereby the specific tempering conditions required will depend on the cocoa butter used, the type of product being made and the subsequent processing. Few solutions exist for controlling the tempering process of chocolate.
Solid Fat Content (SFC), the generally accepted analysis of fats and oils in the food industry, is crucial to the texture of chocolate. As SFC may change during manufacturing and storage, it is important to be able to measure this parameter to control the ingredients and manufacturing conditions for achieving optimum product quality. Traditional methods of SFC determination are slow, irreproducible, require additional chemicals and are based on sampling. An in-line sensor capable of measuring the SFC in the chocolate melt would allow automated control of the tempering process and would be of great value to manufacturers.
Ultrasonics is a popular technique for understanding phase transitions as the acoustic properties of solids and liquids are so different that changes are easy to measure. Two possible methods for controlling the tempering process will be explored based on the use of ultrasound: a novel technology to control the crystal size distribution during tempering, and development of an in-line sensor capable of measuring the SFC, crystal size distribution and polymorph distribution in the melt. The combination of two methods in a system that is readily integrated in chocolate tempering machines will represent a breakthrough for the EU chocolate industry.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineering
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesacousticsultrasound
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-SME-2012
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
BSG-SME - Research for SMEsCoordinator
08940 Madrid
Spain