PRELIMINARY DESIGN OF A MEDIUM-SCALE COCOA POWDER AND BUTTER INDUSTRY INTEGRATED WITH SECONDARY FERMENTATION TECHNOLOGY: OPTIMIZATION OF DRYING SECONDARY FERMENTED COCOA BEANS (THEOBROMA CACAO L) WITH THE ADDITION OF STRAWBERRY POWDER (FRAGARIA SP) USING RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY (RSM)

• Main Author: M. Nainggolan, Billifie
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/83625
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is a vital plantation commodity in the chocolate industry and a globally popular product. Indonesia is the sixth-largest cocoa producer and the third-largest processor in the world, with Indonesian cocoa being renowned for its high quality. Although cocoa plantations have grown significantly over the past two decades, recent developments show a decline in plantation area and production due to aging trees. This affects fluctuating cocoa exports, not only due to decreased productivity but also because the cocoa processed by farmers has low quality due to poor post-harvest processing, one of which is fermentation. The fermentation process is crucial for enhancing cocoa quality; however, at the farmer level, fermentation occurs spontaneously with microorganism contamination, resulting in inconsistent flavors. The use of external starter microbes has been adopted to improve fermentation quality, along with innovations in secondary fermentation by adding strawberry powder to enhance the quality of cocoa beans. Besides fermentation, drying becomes a crucial stage in determining the flavor of cocoa beans. This study will use an alternative in the form of an artificial dryer, specifically an oven, where temperature and drying duration are essential factors, as well as the thickness of the bean layer during drying. This research design employs Response Surface Methodology (RSM) with a Box-Behnken Design (BBD) model in the Minitab 21® program to determine the most optimal treatment from variations in drying duration (12–48 hours), temperature (35°C-60°C), and layer thickness (3-7 cm) with responses to the number of beans and moisture content. Based on the research results, it was found that the best combination of treatment variations for each desired test response is a drying duration of 20.3 hours at a temperature of 35°C and a layer thickness of 7 cm.