Thermal processes in the candy process of chestnut

Candying process is applied to chestnuts to obtain a very appreciated and high added value product, usually referred as “Marrón Glacé”. This process can be conducted by pastry chefs on small lots of product, or at industrial level on medium or large lots of chestnuts at a time. The unit operation that characterizes this process is the osmotic dehydration, which is responsible of the partial remove of the water from the product and the contemporaneous transfer of solutes of a hypertonic solution (glucose and sucrose) into the product. In this phase, thermal processes play an important role for the final quality of the product. The particular structure of candying industrial plants requires specific analytic and simulation methodologies for the analysis and the design of the systems. This paper presents a model-based methodology to describe and simulate the thermal energy supply in a multi-station industrial candy plant.