Cocoa Butter Washing and Clarifying
Chocolate is a luxury item which enjoys consistent popularity all over the world. The basic material for producing it is cocoa butter. Before it can be processed into chocolate, the cocoa butter must be freed of unwanted solids. Clarifiers and separators from GEA Westfalia Separator play a central role in this process.
Washing and clarifying cocoa butter
Cocoa butter is traditionally obtained using hydraulic presses. These presses are then used to obtain cocoa butter and obtain as low fat a cocoa powder as possible. The presses reduce the butter content in the solid cake to as little as 8 percent. However, this requires a relatively high press pressure. Due to this pressure, a large quantity of solids is discharged with the butter.
This is where GEA Westfalia Separator clarifiers are used. They separate the unwanted solids at a preliminary stage. Self-cleaning separators subsequently handle extremely fine clarification. The result is pure cocoa butter which satisfies all quality parameters.
Straight from the shrub to processing
The process technology developed by GEA Westfalia Separator allows straightforward processing on site, right where the cocoa is harvested. This follows the trend of moving production away from industrialized nations and back to the growing countries. For example in Ghana, currently the third largest grower of cocoa with a harvest of around 380,000 tons, GEA Westfalia Separator decanters and separators ensure an efficient and economical process technology. The high-quality cocoa butter then goes from here to international chocolate manufacturers.