Copper levels in semi-finished and finished cocoa products in Ghana

Abstract

Ghana is the world’s second largest producer of cocoa beans. In addition to exporting raw cocoa beans, the country also processes some of its beans into finished and semi-finished cocoa products for both the local and international markets. The levels of copper were determined in four batches of raw cocoa and semi-finished cocoa products sampled at various intermediate stages of the manufacturing process. The copper contents of four batches of ten different finished cocoa products in Ghanaian market were also determined. Analyses of the copper contents in cocoa containing samples were affected by atomic absorption spectrometry. An average recovery of 99.3% was obtained for the metal when the samples were spiked with known concentrations of copper. The variations in the copper contents of raw cocoa, semi-finished and finished products show that there were no effective contaminations of copper during the manufacturing process; the amount of copper in the finished products corresponded to the fraction of cocoa mass present. The copper content of locally manufactured cocoa products was lower than WHO acceptable levels