Chocolate: Phase ID

X-ray diffraction (XRD) in the food and candy industry is crucial to producing a quality product. You would not want to have coconut flavoring in your plain dark chocolate bar or a sweet chocolate to be too bitter.

Below is a diffractogram of the milk chocolate specimen shown at the right. The first set of peaks in red is sucrose. The second set in blue is lactose hydrate (essentially dehydrated milk). Finally a few peaks in purple down at 2-7° 2θ can be identified corresponding to the chocolate.

Using the MiniFlex II in combination with MDI's Jade software, one can quickly observe that in this milk chocolate specimen; the proper ingredients have been added.

Tags: composition,  MiniFlex II, powder XRD, phase identification,  chocolate