SIZE SCALE UP OF PASTA DRYING PROCESS: MODELLING APPROACH Bruno de Cindio ♦ , Massimo Migliori, Domenico Gabriele, Claudio M. Pollini 1 ABSTRACT The use of Very High Temperature (VHT) treatments in high quality pasta production has been the most relevant innovation in pasta technologies since twenty years. This technology allows to increase the plants productivity because of its reduced process time but, using a VHT a good process control is required in order to reduce the thermal damage on pasta due to the severe process conditions. This paper aims to show the use of a simulative drying model in order to adapt the process conditions when the pasta size is changed. Using either long or short pasta shape (spaghetti and rigatoni) the optimisation of drying curves is carried out in order to guarantee for different pasta size a right fixed final pasta humidity. As main result all the drying profiles overlap each other when plotted against the dimensionless treatment time. This suggests that a “master curve” may be obtained for any pasta shape and this curve can be used as reference in scaling-up total process time when the pasta size has to be changed. The results have been also compared in terms of furosine content, assumed as an index of thermal damage, and it appears that the thermal damage is still acceptable also for longer treatment time in agreement with the expectations of pasta makers. KEYWORDS: Pasta production, Drying process modelling, Process Scale-up. ♦ Corresponding author