Increase of Solidification Rate to Improve Quality of Productivity for Xylitol/Sorbitol Crystalline Candy Products

Publication date: Available online 21 September 2019Source: Journal of Food EngineeringAuthor(s): Kentaro ATSUKAWA, Shoji KUDO, Shuntaro AMARI, Hiroshi TAKIYAMAAbstractWhen manufacturing crystalline candies, increase of the solidification rate is important to improve the quality of productivity. The effect of outer seed crystal specifications and stirring period in processing for food engineering on the solidification rate of molten sugar was investigated based on the concept of solid-state transformation of sugar melt crystallization. From experiments using outer seed crystals, we found that the solidification rate depended on the surface of the seed crystals and the stirring period before molten sugar was cast. This dependence was caused by shear nucleation where microcrystal fragments are generated by an attrition process based on shear force from the crystal surface. Without the proposed treatment, solidification required 106.0 h. However, we succeeded in increasing the solidification rate to 1.0 h, which is approximately 106 times faster. Thus, we proposed an operational strategy to improve the quality of productivity.

Source: Journal of Food Engineering - September 22, 2019 Category: Food Science Source Type: research