Investigating the performance of Steam Jet Agglomerator as a mean to produce Instanised Cocoa Drink

Popularity of cocoa-based drink has been growing since long time ago in tropical countries. Iced cocoa drink is highly consumed due to the fact that the ambient temperature in the tropical region is relatively high. This condition stimulates cocoa drink industries to continuously improve the quality of their products. This work investigated the performance of small-scale steam jet agglomerator used to produce instanised cocoa powder. This small-scale machine is designed to increase the solubility of cocoa powder, thus cocoa powder will be easily solubilised in cold water. In this study, a small-scale steam jet agglomerator was manufactured. Afterwards, the impact of three drying times, namely 60°C, 80°C, 100°C and three levels of agglomeration process cycle, namely 1,2,3 cycles as well as their interaction on the solubility and colour of the products was investigated. The results showed that the solubility increased as the number of agglomeration process cycle increased. With regard to the colour, the brightness level decreased as the drying temperature and number of agglomeration process cycle increased. © 2019 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.