A population balance model for the chocolate roller refining process

A study was performed to analyze the evolution of particle size distribution in the chocolate roller refining process. A mathematical model based on the continuity and population balance equations was developed to interpret industrial data. The industrial data were provided for chocolate pastes with powder/crystalline sugar particles at low/high shear rates. The parameters of the breakage frequency and fragment distribution function were estimated using industrial data. After parameter fitting, the model shows good agreement with the experimental results for varying conditions with a single consistently chosen set of parameters. This provides confidence that the general model structure is suitable for process evaluation. The population balance model was used to analyze the influence of changing some process variables on the efficiency of grinding. The results show that there might exist optimum values of the roll’s diameter and rotational velocity for a specific configuration of the equipment.