INVESTIGATION OF THE PROCESS OF GRINDING OF PRESCRIPTION COMPONENTS OF CHOCOLATE MASSES IN ELECTROMECHANICAL DISPERSANTS
In modern conditions, due to the rise in the price of imported raw materials of cocoa beans, research on the optimization of hardware and technological schemes of chocolate production is becoming a priority. The article presents the results of studies of the process of grinding the dispersed phase of chocolate masses (a mixture of sugar and cocoa) on a new type of apparatus - an electromechanical dispersant (EMD), the design scheme of which and the principle of operation are the subject of the invention and are protected by a patent of the Russian Federation. It is revealed that the hardware and technological schemes currently used at the enterprises of the industry with a multi-stage grinding operation contribute to the re-grinding of the material and the redistribution of the particle size distribution in the area of small fractions. It is proved that the presence of fractions with a size of less than 10 microns causes an overspend of cocoa butter in the process of preparing chocolate masses. Fine particles increase the adsorption surface, which causes an overspend of this expensive imported raw material, which is added according to the recipe to the semi-finished product to achieve the viscosity required by the technology. In addition, the introduction of additional equipment leads to an increase in the cost of production, a decrease in energy efficiency, an increase in the energy intensity of the products produced and, ultimately, an increase in the prices of finished chocolate products. The results of the research showed that the single-stage grinding in the EMD allows you to get the product in the specified technology granulometric composition, which helps to improve the quality and save expensive imported ingredient-cocoa butter. Reducing the dispersion stages also helps to reduce the cost of finished chocolate.