Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368

Design of a cryogenic grinding system for spices

K.K. Singh a,*, T.K. Goswami b
a
Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Berasia Road, Nabibagh, Bhopal 462 038, India
b
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India
Received 3 April 1998; accepted 1 December 1998

Abstract
The fat content of spices poses problems of temperature rise and sieve clogging during grinding. Due to this temperature rise,
spices lose a signicant fraction of their volatile oil or avouring components. Therefore, a cryogenic grinding system was designed
and developed to cool the spices before feeding to the grinder and also maintain the cryogenic temperature in the grinding zone. The
main components of the cryogenic grinding system are a precooler and grinder. The precooler consists of a screw conveyor as-
sembly, a compressor, a liquid nitrogen dewar and power transmission unit. The design considerations, calculations and devel-
opment of the precooler have been discussed in the paper. A commercially available grinder was adopted for this purpose. The tests
conducted on grinding of cumin seed revealed that it could be successfully ground below the temperature of 70C. Above this
temperature, sieve clogging took place. The increase in grinding temperature from160C to 70C resulted in a signicant increase
in particle size of the product and specic energy consumption in grinding. A variation in volatile oil content was obtained in the
range of 3.303.26 ml/100 g with increasing temperature from 160C to 70C, but this variation was found to be non-signicant
at 5% level. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction During grinding of black pepper in a kitchen grinder,

Grinding of spices is an age-old technique like
grinding of other food materials. The main aim of spice
grinding is to obtain smaller particle size with good
product quality in terms of avour and colour. In the
normal grinding process, heat is generated when energy
is used to fracture a particle into a smaller size. This
generated heat usually is detrimental to the product and
results in some loss of avour and quality. The fat in
spices generally poses extra problems and is an impor-
tant consideration in grinding. During grinding, the
temperature of the product rises to a level in the range of
4295C (Pruthi & Misra, 1963), which varies with the
oil and moisture content of the spices, but spices lose a
signicant fraction of their volatile oil or avouring
components due to this temperature rise. The losses of
volatile oil for dierent spices have been reported to be
in the tune of 37% for nutmeg, 14% for mace, 17% for
cinnamon and 17% for oregano (Andres, 1976). The loss
of volatile oil during grinding of caraway seed has been
reported to be 32% with an increase in grinding tem-
perature from 17C to 45C (Wolf & Pahl, 1990).
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91-0755-730983; fax: +91-755-
734016; e-mail: kksingh@ciae.mp.nic.in
0260-8774/99/$ see front matter 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 2 6 0 - 8 7 7 4 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 1 7 2 - 1
the application of liquid nitrogen resulted in a 26% in-
crease in volatile oil at the product temperature of
20C in comparison to ambient grinding at the prod-
uct temperature of 62C (Murthy, Krishnamurthy, Ra-
mesh & Srinivasa Rao, 1996). The temperature rise of
the product can be minimized to some extent by circu-
lating cold air or water around the grinder. But this
technique is not sucient to signicantly reduce the
temperature rise of the product.
The loss of volatile oil can be signicantly reduced by
a cryogenic grinding technique (Pruthi, 1980). Liquid
nitrogen at 195.6C provides the refrigeration needed
to precool the spices and maintain the desired low
temperature by absorbing the heat generated during the
grinding operation. In addition to maintaining the low
temperature, vaporization of the liquid nitrogen to the
gaseous state, in eect, creates an inert and dry atmo-
sphere for additional protection of spice quality. Pre-
cooling of the raw spice and the continuous low
temperature maintained within the mill reduces the loss
of volatile oils and moisture thereby retaining most of
the avour strength per unit mass of spice.
The extremely low temperature in the grinder solidi-
es oils so that the spices become embrittled; they
crumble easily permitting grinding to a ner and more
360 K.K. Singh, T.K. Goswami / Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368
consistent size. Thus considerably smaller particle size
can be obtained under cryogenic conditions. The nely
ground spices spread their avour uniformly throughout
the product body in which they are used, thereby re-
ducing the problem of large specks appearing in the
food products. With cryogenic grinding, the tempera-
ture of the products can be as low as 195.6C. But such
a low temperature is not required for all spices. In
practice, it is regulated anywhere from 195.6C to few
degrees below ambient temperatures (Russo, 1976). The
temperature to be used is determined by parameters,
viz., the nal product size, colour required etc. of the
product.
For removing the required heat from a particle prior
to its feeding into the grinder, cryogenic precoolers are
used. The cryogenic precoolers can be combined with
impact, attrition, or air swept mills. It is ensured that the
particle during grinding is at or below its brittle point.
Provisions are made to control the precooler tempera-
ture and feed rate to the mill.
From the aforesaid statements, there seems enough
justication for cryogenic grinding of spices in order to
obtain high quality products. Therefore, a cryogenic
grinding system was designed, developed and tested for
cumin seed.
2. Design and development
The cryogenic grinding system consists of two main
units, namely precooling unit and grinding unit.
2.1. Precooling unit
The cryogenic precooler is a cooling device made up
of a screw conveyor enclosed in a properly insulated
barrel and a system to introduce liquid nitrogen into the
barrel, thereby providing refrigeration (liquid and cold
gas) within the system. The function of the cryogenic
precooler is to remove the heat from the material before
it enters the grinder. The particle temperature must be
low enough to absorb the heat generated in the grinder
and still fracture. Cryogenic precoolers, therefore, must
have the ability to reduce the temperature of the seed
below its brittle point as well as the freezing point of its
oil, before it enters the grinder. There must be provision
to control the temperature of the precooler and the feed
rate to the grinder (Venetucci, 1980) for the obvious
purpose of controlling the grinding process.
Consumption of liquid nitrogen and the operating
cost are important considerations and matters of con-
cern for a cryogenic precooling system. The liquid ni-
trogen losses can be minimized to a great extent by
proper consideration of the design and insulation of the
precooler. The precooling unit consists of a screw con-
veyor assembly, an air compressor, a liquid nitrogen
(LN2 ) dewar, a power transmission arrangement and
control panels.
The design, development and introduction of the
precooling unit was to prevent the material from being
heated up during grinding. The unit would precool the
material before the actual starting of the grinding op-
eration. This would minimise the loss of quality of the
nal powdered material. The precooling unit was de-
signed and developed to match with an available labo-
ratory grinder that could withstand low temperature
operations. The details of design and development of the
precooling unit are presented below.
2.1.1. Engineering considerations
The main engineering considerations (Wagner, 1972)
which can be adopted in the design and development of
a cryogenic precooler are:
1. Retention time of the seed in the liquid nitrogen and
gaseous zone should be accurately proportioned so
that the available refrigeration could be utilised at
its optimum level.
2. Appropriate insulation should be used such that loss-
es to the ambient could be minimised.
3. Various components of the precooler should be ar-
ranged in such a manner that dismantling and clean-
ing could be easier.
4. Cooldown losses should be reduced by keeping the
machine size and structural components to a mini-
mum.
In addition to the above design considerations, other
major factors which inuence the design of a cryogenic
precooler have been described below.
2.1.2. Heat transfer coecient
For an ecient liquid nitrogen precooler, it is essen-
tial that as much heat as possible should be removed
from the seed by the cold gaseous nitrogen. In order to
obtain a high freezing rate, it is necessary that the LN2
evaporates on the seed to be frozen, because a very high
heat transfer coecient can be obtained when heat
transfer takes place to the liquid boiling on a solid
surface. The attainable heat transfer coecients between
seed and gas, or rather between seed and gasied liquid
determine the ratio of the length of the freezing zone to
that of the chilling zone.
In the cryogenic liquid nitrogen freezer, these coe-
cients range in the order of 170 W/m2 K in the liquid
spray zone to 70 W/m2 K in the gas zone (Wagner, 1972).
With these heat transfer coecients, the ideal retention
time of the seed in the gas and liquid spray can be cal-
culated.
2.1.3. Design calculation
For calculation of cooling load, freezing time and size
of various components of the precooler, data on cumin
 K.K. Singh, T.K. Goswami / Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368
seed was taken. Some of the data were assumed based
on available literature and logical considerations and the
data related to physical and thermal properties of the
cumin seed were used from experimental results (Singh
& Goswami, 1996; Singh, 1997).
2.1.3.1. Cooling load. The temperature of the cumin seed
at the outlet of the precooler was assumed as 120o C,
and the temperature required to be maintained in the
grinder was from 100C to 90o C. This temperature
was selected as it was below the freezing point of cumin
oil, i.e. 43o C and the brittle point of the seed, i.e.
70C. It was considered that a part of the temperature
rise in the grinder would be neutralised by the lower
temperature of the cumin seed entering the grinder and
the remainder would be neutralised through heat re-
moval from the grinder by liquid, if any, as well as
gaseous nitrogen passing out from the precooler.
Eq. (1) is used to calculate the total amount of heat
required to be removed from the cumin seed per unit
mass:
q C1 T1 Tf Lf C2 Tf T2 1 The values of following parameters are taken from
where q is the heat transferred from the seed, J/kg, C1
the specic heat of the seed above freezing point, J/kg
C, C2 the specic heat of the seed below freezing point,
J/kg C, Lf the latent heat of fusion of the seed, J/kg, T1
the initial temperature of the seed, C, T2 the nal
temperature of the seed, C and Tf is the freezing tem-
perature of the seed, C.
The values of the following parameters were taken
from Singh (1997):
Specic heat of the cumin seed above freezing point
(C1 ) 2600 J/kg.
Specic heat of the cumin seed below freezing point
(C2 ) 2000 J/kg.
Freezing point of the cumin oil (Tf ) 43C.
Latent heat of fusion (Lf ) of moisture and oil present
in the seed is calculated assuming 10% m.c.w.b. and 14%
oil content.
Lf latent heat of fusion of water m.c.w.b + latent
heat of fusion of cumin oil oil content 35000 J/kg.
Initial temperature of the seed 30C.
Final temperature of the seed 120C.
Using Eq. (1), the cooling load is calculated as,
q 379000 J/kg.
Assuming the insulation, leakage and other losses of
the system as 20%, the total cooling load (q) is 455000 J/
kg.
The cooling load can be assumed to be distributed in
the ratio of 70 : 30 in the liquid and gaseous zone, thus:
Cooling load in the liquid zone (ql ) 318500 J/kg.
Cooling load in the gaseous zone (qg ) 136500 J/kg.
2.1.3.2. Freezing or retention time. The time required for
freezing with liquid nitrogen depends on several thermo-
361
physical and geometrical parameters of the cumin seed,
initial and nal temperatures of the seed, heat transfer
coecients between the cooling medium and the surface
of the seed, etc. The time required for freezing with
liquid nitrogen has been cited by Barron (1972) based on
modication of Plank's basic formula for calculating
freezing time of moisture and oil present in the seed (Eq.
(2)):
   
5C1 T1 Tf qs qd 1 Bd
tf 1 2
8Lf Tf Tg hc k
where Tg is the refrigerant temperature, C, qs the true
density of the seed, kg/m3 , d the radius of the seed, m, hc
the convectional heat transfer coecient of the seed, W/
m2 C, k the thermal conductivity of the seed, W/m C
and B is the constant that depends on the geometry of
the seed.
The freezing or retention time (tf ) is calculated by using
Eq. (2).
While calculating the retention time it was assumed
that the cumin seeds are of cylindrical shape.
Singh and Goswami (1996); Singh (1997).
True density of the seed (qs ) 1070 kg/m3 .
Radius of the seed considering cylindrical shape
(d) 1.1103 m.
Thermal conductivity of the seed (k) 0.15 W/m C.
Heat transfer coecient in liquid zone 170 W/m2
C (Wagner, 1972).
Heat transfer coecient in gaseous zone 70 W/m2
C (Wagner, 1972).
Constant B for cylindrical shaped product 1/16
(Wagner, 1972).
The freezing or retention time in liquid zone was
calculated by substituting the above mentioned values in
Eq. (2) as:
tf liquid 68 s.
tfgaseous 134 s.
Total retention time of the seed in the precooler:
(tf )liquid +(tf )gaseous 68+134 202 s.
2.1.3.3. Screw conveyor A horizontal screw conveyor
was designed to meet the requirement of feeding to the
grinder and metering.
The throughput capacity of a screw conveyor mainly
depends on the screw diameter, pitch of the screw, and
rotational speed. The capacity of the screw conveyor can
be calculated by using Eq. (3) (Spivakovsky & Dyach-
kov, 1985).
Q 47  D2 d 2  p  n  w  qb  C 3
where, Q is the capacity of a screw conveyor, kg/h, D the
screw diameter, m, d the screw shaft diameter, m, p the
pitch of the screw, m, n the rotational speed of the screw
conveyor, RPM, qb the bulk density of the seed, kg/m3 ,
w the coecient of friction of screw cross section and C
362 K.K. Singh, T.K. Goswami / Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368
is the correction factor that depends on angle of incli-
nation of screw.
Diameter of the screw. The screw diameter is generally
selected as
D P 10 to 12  a
where D is screw diameter and a is average size of the
seed which was taken as 5 mm (Singh & Goswami,
1996). Thus,
D 10  5 50 mm:
The shaft diameter (d) was assumed as 30 mm.
Pitch of the screw. The screw pitch (p) was taken as
one-third of the screw diameter, therefore,
Pitch 17:5 mm:
Rotational speed of the screw conveyor. The value of
the bulk density (qb ) of the cumin seed was taken as 500
kg/m3 (Singh & Goswami, 1996).
w 0.45 for light non-abrasive materials (Spivakov-
sky & Dyachkov, 1985).
C 1 at 0o angle of inclination of the screw
(Spivakovsky & Dyachkov, 1985).
The screw conveyor was designed for the capacity of
3 kg/h to suit the requirement of the grinder under
study.
Thus substituting the above values in Eq. (3),
n 10 RPM:
Since conveying velocity, v p  n=60 0:0292 m/s
and residence time, tf L=v.
Substituting the value of residence time in liquid zone
as 68 s and conveying velocity as 0.0292 m/s, we get
length of liquid zone 200 mm. Similarly substituting
the value of residence time in gaseous zone as 134 s,
length of gaseous zone 391 mm which is approximated
to 400 mm. Thus total length of the screw conveyor is
600 mm.
2.1.4. Description of precooling unit
The screw conveyor consists of a 600 mm long and 50
mm diameter screw made of aluminium (Fig. 1). The
Fig. 1. Sectional view of coolong zone showing position of screw conveyor and distributor.
total length and diameter of the shaft are 750 and 30
mm, respectively. The lead of the screw is 17.5 mm. The
shaft is supported by two aluminium bushes xed with
anges at both ends. The screw shaft is enclosed in a 70
mm diameter and 655 mm long aluminium barrel. Both
ends of the barrel are covered with anges which are
pressed between barrel ends and bushes. The shaft is
enclosed in the barrel in such a manner that a gap of 1.5
mm is maintained between the screw and the bottom
portion of the inner surface of the barrel throughout the
length, so that material is not retained at the inner
surface of the cage. The barrel is insulated from outside
with asbestos rope and asbestos powder throughout the
surface to minimize heat gain from the surrounding. The
thickness of the insulation is 10 mm. At the upper
portion of the barrel, a distributor made of copper tube
having 200 mm length and 10 mm internal diameter, is
xed (Fig. 2). The distributor has a number of perfo-
rations to spray liquid nitrogen over the material being
conveyed through the barrel. The diameters of the per-
forations are 0.5 mm up to half of the length in both side
from the centre, i.e. 50 mm on both side from the centre
of the distributor, and 1 mm on rest of 50 mm at the
ends of the distributor. There are three rows of the
perforations in a zig-zag manner, one at centre and two
at 45 angle from the centre (Fig. 2). The centre to centre
spacing between perforations is 10 mm. Both ends of the
tube are closed. The distributor is xed at 10 mm dis-
tance from the inlet and 380 mm from the outlet to allow
thorough mixing of the liquid and vapour nitrogen with
the material, and to freeze the oil present in the material.
The screw shaft and cage are mounted on a frame made
of 800 mm  310 mm  335 mm mild steel angle iron
(Fig. 3).
An air compressor (Model HS-WP-1, High Speed
Appliances, Bombay) is used to supply compressed air
to the liquid nitrogen (LN2 ) dewar (Fig. 4). The result-
ing pressure helps the liquid to ow out of the dewar.
The maximum air ow rate of the compressor is 110 l/
min. It was driven by a 550 W single phase electric
motor. The compressor has provision for automatic cut-
o of the power supply at a particular air pressure. The
 K.K. Singh, T.K. Goswami / Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368 363

Fig. 2. Details of liquid nitrogen distributor.

air ow at the outlet of the compressor can be varied
with the help of a valve.
A double walled, vacuum insulated dewar (IBP make)
having capacity of 55 l was used for storage and transfer
of LN2 (Fig. 4). An LN2 transfer assembly (IBP make)
was xed over the dewar to regulate the ow rate of the
liquid nitrogen passing to distributor attached to the
conveyor assembly. The transfer assembly contained a
pressure gauge (range 01 kg/cm2 and least count 0.02
kg/cm2 ) to indicate the pressure inside the LN2 dewar, a
relief valve for protection against excessive pressure and
a manual shut-o valve to control the LN2 ow. A 10
mm diameter teon tube was used to connect the LN2
dewar and distributor of the screw conveyor assembly.
A 370 W, single phase DC motor was used to op-
erate the conveyor (Fig. 3). The electric supply was
given through a variable speed DC motor to the speed
reduction unit. The ratio of the gear reduction unit was
36:1. The shaft of the gear reduction unit was coupled
with the screw shaft through a coupling made of Hylam
(bakelite reinforced fabric) as shown in Fig. 3. The
material Hylam insulates the cold screw shaft from the
warm motor shaft. The speed of the screw shaft could
be varied by regulating the input voltage to the motor
through a transformer. The feed rate and retention time
of the grinding material in the precooler were controlled
to the desired levels by controlling the speed of the
shaft.

Fig. 3. Details of screw conveyor assembly.

364 K.K. Singh, T.K. Goswami / Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368

Fig. 4. Schematic view of cryogenic grinding system.

Fig. 5. Schematic diagram of the grinder.

 K.K. Singh, T.K. Goswami / Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368
2.2. Grinder
Fig. 5 shows the dierent components of the grinder
(Model Pulverisette 14, Fritsch Industries, Germany)
with major dimensions; its pictorial view.
The main components of the grinder were a 88.5 mm
diameter rotor rotating at a peripheral velocities of 69
m/s (15000 revolutions per minute) and 92 m/s (20000
revolutions per minute). The rotor contained 8 or 12
number of xed ribs. Depending upon the requirement,
the rotor containing 8 and 12 number of ribs could be
selected. The rotor was surrounded by a sieve ring of
trapezoidal opening of uniform size. Sieve rings of dif-
ferent opening sizes (0.08, 0.12, 0.2, 0.5 and 1.0 mm)
were available. However, for the experimental purpose
only 0.5 and 1.0 mm sieves were chosen. The sieve
opening size controlled the nal product size. The op-
eration of grinding was performed by impact and attri-
tion. The impact was achieved by the material being
struck with rotor ribs, whereas the attrition was
achieved while the seeds were present between the sta-
tionery sieve ring and the fast moving rotor. The speed
of the rotor could be controlled through an in-built
control mechanism.
The ground powder was collected in the collector pan
from an outlet. A nylon bag was attached to the outlet
with a locking clamp. The nylon bag retained the par-
ticles and allowed the nitrogen vapour to escape from
the grinder. The overall dimension of the grinder was
465 mm320 mm400 mm. The grinder was operated by
a 800 W, single phase electric motor.
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Materials
For the present study, cumin seed was obtained from
the local market during FebruaryMarch, 1995. The
initial average moisture content of the seed was found to
be 9.53% d.b. The moisture content of the seed was
determined by vacuum oven method at 70C and 100
mm Hg until a constant weight was obtained (Rang-
anna, 1986). The seeds were cleaned manually for bro-
ken and immature seeds and foreign matters.
3.2. Experimental procedure
For experimentation, the thermocouple bulb was
placed in the collecting pan in such a manner that it
could measure the temperature of the ground product
just coming out through the screen perforations. The
compressor was run before starting the experiments. The
outlet valve of the compressor was opened slightly so as
to get the required preset pressure in the liquid nitrogen
(LN2 ) dewar depending upon the grinding temperature
365
to be maintained. The valve of transfer line was opened
to enable the liquid nitrogen ow into the distributor of
the screw conveyor assembly (Fig. 4). The screw con-
veyor assembly and the grinder were cooled to the de-
sired temperature of grinding (160C to 70C). The
speed of screw conveyor was selected through a variable
speed DC motor. The screw conveyor was run at a speed
required for maintaining the desired level of feed rate to
the grinder. Samples of 200 g material were lled into
the inlet of the screw conveyor assembly. The grinder
was run at the selected speed of 69 m/s. The material was
allowed to enter into the grinder after passing through
the precooler. The grinding took place at the predecided
temperature in the range of 160 to 70C at the in-
terval of 30C with variation of 3C. In the case of
temperature rise during grinding, the ow rate of liquid
nitrogen was increased by increasing the opening of
transfer line valve. During grinding, the power con-
sumed for grinding the material was measured by using
the wattmeter (range 0750 W) connected to the motor.
The powder was collected in a bag attached to the outlet
of the chute and the nitrogen vapour let out.
The powder samples were packed into moisture re-
sistant exible pouches immediately after grinding. They
were sealed properly to check ingress of moisture from
the surrounding atmosphere. The samples were stored at
10C till they were analysed for particle size distribu-
tion, volatile oil content and colour.
3.3. Measurements
A single phase wattmeter (range 0750 W, least count
5 W) was connected with the machine to measure the
power consumed and ultimately to measure the energy
required in grinding. The following formula is used to
calculate the specic energy consumed in grinding:
Specific energy consumption
Power consumed W  3:6
Feed rate kg=h
The particle size analysis was carried out by laser scat-
tering using Malvern Particle Sizer (Malvern 3601,
Malvern Instruments, UK).
The volatile oil content of cumin powder ground at
dierent cryogenic temperatures was estimated by dis-
tillation method using Clevenger apparatus (Pearson,
1973).
4. Results and discussion
The experiments on grinding of cumin seed were con-
ducted at dierent temperatures from 160C to 10C.
The sieve choking, particle size distribution, specic
energy consumption and quality of the nal product were
observed using 8 number of grinders rotor ribs.
366 K.K. Singh, T.K. Goswami / Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368
4.1. Sieve choking characteristics
Observations on choking of sieves were facilitated by
taking photographs of the sieve at grinding tempera-
tures of 70, 40 and 10C either at the completion of
Fig. 6. Photograph showing deposition of cumin powder over sieve
surface at dierent grinding temperatures.
grinding or when the machine was stopped due to sieve
choking. As shown in Fig. 6(a), it was observed that at
the grinding temperature of 70C, the deposition of
cumin powder was minimum. Below 70C, grinding
was smooth without any deposition and the sieve was
very clear. Accumulation of powder at 40C ac-
counted for about 50% area of the sieve being blocked as
shown in Fig. 6(b). At 10C (Fig. 6(c)) almost all the
perforations were blocked. Above 70C the grinding
experiments could not be completed successfully, be-
cause the sieve perforations were blocked soon after
running the machine and it stopped due to overloading
with the incoming material.
The accumulation of powder on the sieve surface
might be due to the fact that during grinding at a tem-
perature higher than the brittle point of the seed and
freezing point of its oil, the seed was soft and behaved
like glue in the grinder. Also, during grinding the oil
might have come out of the cells, which had sticky
characteristics and formed a layer over the sieve surface
(Li et al., 1991). The powder was deposited above this
layer and formed a thick layer on the sieve surface which
created hindrance in grinding. At the same time, the
incoming raw material overloaded the grinding surface
and stopped the grinder. At temperatures lower than the
brittle point of cumin seed and freezing point of cumin
oil, the oil got solidied and the grinding operation was
smoother.
4.2. Particle size distribution
Particle size distribution of cumin powder ground at
dierent temperatures in the range of 160C to
Fig. 7. Particle size distribution of cumin powder ground at dierent
temperatures.
 K.K. Singh, T.K. Goswami / Journal of Food Engineering 39 (1999) 359368 367

Table 1
Eect of grinding temperature on volume mean diameter, specic energy consumption and volatile oil

Grinding temperature (C) Volume mean diameter (lm) Specic energy consumption (kJ/kg) Volatile oil (ml/100 g)

160 153.2 55 3.30

130 169.5 65 3.28
100 193.1 79 3.28
70 215.0 98 3.26
F-value 365a 164a 3b
a
Signicant at 1% level.
b
Non-signicant.

70C has been presented in Fig. 7. It may be observed
that as the grinding temperature increased from
160C to 70C, there was an increase in the particle
size for the same cumulative volume fraction for both
the rotors. Similar characteristics of the particle size
distribution of ground caraway powder at dierent
grinding temperatures (044C) were observed by Wolf
and Pahl (1990).
4.3. Volume mean diameter
The volume mean diameter increased from 153.2 to
215 lm with increasing grinding temperature from
160C to 70C (Table 1). This increase in volume
mean diameter was found to be signicant at 1% level
and it followed a second order polynomial relationship.
The variation in the volume mean diameter with
grinding temperature can be represented by Eq. (4):
Dv 281:78 1:057T 0:0016T 2
4
r2 1
where, Dv is the volume mean diameter, lm, T the
grinding temperature, C and r2 is the coecient of
determination.
4.4. Specic energy consumption
The specic energy consumption increased from 55 to
98 kJ/kg with increasing grinding temperature from
160C to 70C (Table 1) and it followed a second
order polynomial relationship. The increase in specic
energy consumption with grinding temperature was
found to be signicant at 1% level. It is obvious that at
low grinding temperature, degree of brittleness of cumin
seed increased due to which it required less energy in
grinding.
The relationship between specic energy consump-
tion and grinding temperature can be represented by Eq.
(5):
E 159:32 1:052T 0:0025T 2
5
r2 1
where E is the specic energy consumption, kJ/kg.
4.5. Volatile oil
The volatile oil content decreased from 3.30 to 3.26
ml/100 g with increasing grinding temperature from
160C to 70C. The statistical analysis of the data
revealed that this dierence was non-signicant at 5%
level. However, Landwehr and Pahl (1986) reported a
decrease in volatile oil content of pepper with increasing
grinding temperature from 10C to 50C. The dier-
ence in the trend of the results from the present study
might be owing to the fact that volatile oil of pepper
consisted of components having low boiling point which
evaporated at corresponding temperatures. Since cumin
seed was ground at much lower temperatures than
pepper, the loss of volatile oil was found to be non-
signicant.
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