Optimisation of the treatment conditions of cocoa butter in order to reduce non-quality

The interest of the use of the experimental designs for the improvement of an industrial process in a real context of production was highlighted by the optimisation of the demucilagination and deodorisation conditions of the cocoa butter using complete factorial designs. The study carried out enabled to obtain a reduction of non-conformity of the final product (cocoa butter) of 28% in times of intensive production to less than 5%. The models obtained for each operation were validated in real industrial context. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.