DAL MILL

Introduction:

Pulses are basically grain legumes. They occupy an important place in human
nutrition due to their high protein content than cereal grains. In Indian dietary
regime it occupies an important place. Since majority of Indians are vegetarians,
they depend largely on grain legumes (pulses) for their dietary protein. Legumes
contribute a major portion of lysine in the vegetarian diet. They are also a fairly
good source of vitamins like thiamine, niacine, riboflavin and much needed iron.
Therefore its quality availability to the common man is a major challenge. Since
recovery was poor in traditional technologies, adoption of modern technology will
go a long way in meeting the need of the common man.

Pulses Production in India:

India is one of the major pulse growing countries in the world. The production of
pulses in India in 2001-02 was 13.19 million tonnes, which was about 27-28% of
the world production. Among the different pulses grown in the country, the
respective share of production has been : chickpea (bengal gram / chana)
40.50% ; pigeon pea (tur /arhar) 17.90%; green gram (moong) 9.20%; black
gram ( urad) 9.10% ; lentils ( masur) 6.10% and other minor pulses 17.20%.
Among the important states engaged in growing pulses have been : Madhya
Pradesh 22.90% ; Uttar Pradesh 18.12% ; Maharashtra 14.25% ; Rajasthan
10.84%; Andhra Pradesh 8.64% ; Karnataka 5.76% and others 19.49% . Thus
about 80.51% of the pulses supply is contributed by five major states. Off late the
production and area under pulses cultivation in the country has been stagnated.
This is because of unfavorable climatic and ecological factors, non availability of
high yielding varieties, improper research support, socio economic factors and
constraints in post harvest technology. As a result of stagnating production and
surging population, the per capita availability of pulses has come down from 70
grams/ day in 1960's to 27 grams/day in 2001. The same was only about 34% of
the World Health Organization's recommendation of 80 grams/capita/day.

Consumption pattern of pulses :

Most of the legumes in raw form contain a wide variety of anti-nutritional factors.
In addition, many of the grain legumes cause flatulence. Thus there exists a need
for processing the grain legumes into consumable form. The various grain
legumes in our country is consumed in the following ways:
Main Uses of Pulses in India are as follows:

Peas/Pulses Main forms of consumption

Green Gram (Moong Beans) - used as a vegetable and for making
snacks
Chick Peas (Desi type) - used for making besan (fine flour)
which is used for making sweets,
snacks, and mixed with wheat flour to
make chapattis (flat bread)
Pigeon Peas (Arhar) - used as a vegetable with meals
Black Gram (Urad) - used as vegetable with meals and for
making pappadam
Chick Pea (Kabuli type) - used as vegetable with meals
Red Lentils (Masoor) - used as vegetable with meals
(consumed mainly in East Indian states)
White Peas (Matar) - used as vegetable with meals. Also
used for making snack food
Cow Peas (Lobhia) - used as vegetable with meals
Kidney Beans (Rajmah) - used as vegetable with meals
Green Peas (Matar) - used as vegetable with meals and for
making snacks.

The Pulse Milling Process:

In India most of the pulses are consumed in dehusked and split form. Thus
processing of pulses assumes a lot of importance. Pulses processing industry
helps in processing the raw grain legumes/ pulses into edible form. Processing
activity is undertaken at 3 different levels. They are:

i. Primary processing: Primary processing activities consist of production of

cleaned, graded, packaged pulses.

ii. Secondary processing: Under secondary processing activities such as

dehusking, splitting, polishing, tumeric/ spices/ salt coating and powdered besan
and packaged dal are done.

iii. Tertiary processing: These activities mostly consist of preparation of roasted,

fried dal and other associated dal products.

Pulses are usually converted into Dal by dehusking/ decutilating and splitting.
Both dry and wet milling processes are employed. Mostly carborundum emery
rollers are used for dehusking and burr grinders for splitting the pulses.
Decutilating is seldom complete in single pass thereby requiring multiple passes.
Each pass produces around 1.5 to 2% fines thereby reducing the overall
recovery of dal during the milling operation.

Basic processes in dal milling are cleaning, grading, conditioning, dehusking,

splitting, separation, polishing and bagging. Major variation is involved with
dehusking process only. Dals like Arahar, Urad, Moong and Lentil are difficult to
dehusk as a result repeated operations by dehusking rollers are required.
Repeated soaking, drying, tempering is done to loosen portions of husk sticking
after rolling operations. Sometimes Linseed oil is also used during dry milling
operation to impart shine or better appeal to the milled dal.

The removal of the outer layer of husk and splitting the grain into two equal
halves is known as milling of pulses. To facilitate dehusking and splitting of
pulses alternate wetting and drying method is used. In India traditional milling
methods produce dehusked split pulses. Loosening of husk by conditioning is
insufficient in traditional methods. To obtain complete dehusking of the grains a
large number of abrasive force is applied resulting in high losses in the form of
brokens and powder. Yield of split & dehusked pulses in traditional mills are only
65 to 75% due to the above losses compared to 88 to 89% potential yield.

Procedure for pulse milling: Basically two types of conventional pulses milling
methods is commonly used in India. They are :

 Wet milling operations

 Dry milling operations

Flow diagram of wet milling of pulses:

Pulses

Cleaning è chaffs, dirts, etc.

Soaking

Mixing with red soil

 |

Conditioning

Dehusking and splitting -- mixture of husk, small broken and powder

Separation and Grading

Dehusked and split pulses

Bagging

Flow diagram for dry milling of pulses:

Pulses

Cleaning è chaffs, dirts, etc.

Pitting

Pretreatment with Linseed Oil

Conditioning

Dehusking and splitting è mixture of husk, small broken and powder

 |

Grading

Polishing

Grade I Pulses

Description of various Unit Operations:

 Cleaning and Grading

Cleaning helps in removal of dust, chaff, dirt, grits, etc. from the pulses.
Grading is done to segregate the grain legumes of desired shape and size
. The same is done using a reel or rotative screen type cleaner.

 Pitting

An emery roller machine is used for cracking the husk layer and for
scratching of clean pulses passing through it. This is done for loosening
the husk from sticking to the cotyledons in order to facilitate subsequent oil
penetration in the following unit operations. Gradually the clearance
between the emery roller and cage (housing) is narrowed from inlet to
outlet. Cracking and scratching of husk takes place mainly by friction
between pulses and emery as the material is passed through the
narrowing clearance. During the operation some of the pulses are
dehusked and split which are separated by sieving.

 Pretreatment with Oil

The scratched or pitted material passes through a screw conveyer and

mixing of some edible oil like linseed oil is done in it. The linseed oil is
used at the rate of 1.5 to 2.5 kg/tonne of pulses. Pulses coming out of the
screw conveyer are kept on floors for about 12 hours to diffuse the oil.

 Conditioning
 Pulses are conditioned by alternate soaking/ wetting , drying and
tempering. Moisture (3.5%) is added to the pulses after sun drying for a
certain period and tempering is done for about eight hours. The grain is
dried in the sun again. Until all pulses are sufficiently conditioned the
whole process of alternate wetting and drying is continued for two to four
days. Pulses are finally dried to about 10 to 12% moisture content prior to
dehusking and splitting.

 Dehusking and Splitting

For dehusking of conditioned pulses carborundum coated emery rollers

are used. In one pass about 50% of pulses are dehusked. Dehusked
pulses are split into two parts. Dehusked split pulses are separated by
sieving and the husk is aspirated off. Unsplit dehusked pulses and tail
pulses are again dehusked and milled in a similar way. For complete
dehusking and splitting the whole process is repeated two to three times.

 Polishing

Polishing is completed by treating dehusked and split pulses with a small

quantity of oil and/or water.

Status of Pulses Processing Industry in India :

Dal milling industry is one of the major agro processing industries in India.
Out of the total production of 13.19 million tonnes of pulse in the country,
75% is processed by these dal mills. There were about 2000 dal mills in
the country in 1972. The numbers grew steadily to 6000 units in 1982,
12000 units in 1995 and 14000 units during the year 1999-2000. Most of
the dal mills in the country are concentrated in selected pockets of the
country i.e. pulses producing areas such as Indore (MP), Jalgaon, Akola
and Nagpur (Maharashtra) and in or near major consumption centres such
as Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi. The units are mostly
traditional ones. They are capital intensive and energy sapping in nature.
The dehusking efficiency in traditional mills is quite low. Moreover, the
yield of dehusked and splitted pulses in traditional mills is about 65-70 %
in comparison to 88-89% maximum potential recovery of splits. Thus,
there is excessive loss of pulse cotyleadons and embroyos in the form of
brokens and powdered grains (5- 15%). The industry is also besieged with
other problems such as low domestic availability of pulses, high block
capital and working capital requirement and presence of large number of
intermediaries in pulses procurement and marketing of finished products.

Need for improved Dal Mills:

The present losses being encountered by the milling industry can be
minimized to a great extent by the use of improved dal mills. These dal
mills are highly versatile and energy efficient, we will be using following
machineries for higher & cost effective output:

Modern Machinery for Pulses Processing

i. Roller machine: Abrasive, carborundum roller cylindrical mill of 100kg
per hour capacity, run by 1.5kW electric motor is readily available in the
market. It has been developed for dehusking and splitting of food legumes
viz.pigeon pea gram and black gram. It consisted mainly of a 300mm
diameter cylindrical emery coated roller to give 13.5 to 14m/s speed at
850-900rpm and dal (splits) recovery rate of 74 to 75%. Though the unit is
similar to traditional miller machine and gives more or less the same dal
recovery, it is useful for small scale production (8 to 10q per day) of dal in
villages & towns.

ii. Cylinder concave dehuller: This machine has been developed by GB

Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnager. It consists of a
380mm long and 220mm diameter cylinder with trunketed surface, and a
concave. The kernels are fed to the unit along the full length of the
cylinder. A similar machine developed at IARI, New Delhi has cylinder
concave set consisting of 150mm diameter mild steel pipe of 6mm
thickness coated with 36 week emery cloth to form a cylinder. The
concave has 1x1mm grooves along the length and spaced at 25mm apart.
The unit runs on 1 H.P. electric motor when operated at 1080rpm
(8.48m/s) and gives a soybean dal yield of 85% at 8.69% moisture content
(d.b) with 94% hulling efficiency. The energy requirement of unit is 2.15
Wh/kg with a milling capacity of 140kg per hour. These units have been
proved to be of high utility value due to higher recovery rates of splits and
improved dehusking efficiency.

iii. Under runner disc (URD) Sheller: The URD sheller (300mm dia,
100mm thick, 900rpm) can be used for milling of bengal gram. It give 83%
recovery of splits with 6% brokens. The energy consumption increases
with increase in feed rate upto 250kg/h and remains constant (2kW) upto
300kg/h and then decreases.

The Central Government is giving a big boost towards the development of

this industry. It has dereserved " Pulses Milling Sector" from the category
of " Small Scale Industries". Hence no license/ permission is required for
setting up of a pulse mill. The mills can obtain their raw material supply
from any source and there is no price distribution controls on
manufactured products.

Considering the above factors, a model project of an improved dal mill has
been prepared with an installed processing capacity of 200 kg/hr operating
in a single shift of 8 hr/day for 25 days in a month thus totaling 480 MT/
annum. The capacity of the unit can be suitably changed as per locational
requirement. It is hoped that establishment of such dal mill at village/
panchayat level can play a major role in development of the sector by
providing much needed processing facility to the villagers and contribution
to employment generation.

Investment Components of an improved dal mill:

The various investment components are as follows:

Land and site development:

The land requirement for establishing a modern pulse milling unit will
depend upon whether the unit will be using wet milling or dry milling
operations for conditioning the pulses prior to dehusking and splitting
operations and the method of drying of the soaked grain pulses. 2.00 acre
of land is required for establishing an improved pulse milling unit having a
processing capacity of 480 MT /annum. The land should be with proper
elevation. Low lying areas should be avoided, else proper land filling,
compaction and consolidation should be done. Availability of suitable
drainage facility, road linkages and communication facility should also be
ensured. The layout of the pulse milling plant should be done in a manner
that helps in smooth operation of various unit operations in tandem to
bring about optimal capacity utilization. Additional area will be required for
sundrying of soaked grain legumes. Development such as construction of
fencing, internal roads and drainage system etc.

Civil construction:

The various sub components are as follows:

1. Raw material store

2. Finished goods store
3. Processing area
4. Office space
5. Machinery Spare Store
6. Gunny Bags Store
7. Panel Board Room
8. Toilet space
9. Miscellaneous space (Drying Platform)
 The size and civil cost of these structures depend on the production
capacity of the project . The civil structures and estimated cost for the
model pulse milling plant is as follows:

Civil Structures
(Amt. Rs.)
S.No. Item Size / Unit Cost Total Cost
Specifications
1 Raw material store 1000 sq.ft An average 300,000
uniform cost @
Rs. 300 / sq.ft
2 Finished Goods 1000 sq.ft An average 300,000
store uniform cost @
Rs. 300 / sq.ft
3 Processing area 1200 sq.ft An average 360,000
uniform cost @
Rs. 300 / sq.ft
4 Office Space 500 sq.ft An average 150,000
uniform cost @
Rs. 300 / sq.ft
5 Machinery Spare 500 sq.ft An average 150,000
Store uniform cost @
Rs. 300 / sq.ft
6 Gunny bags 500 sq.ft An average 150,000
storage room uniform cost @
Rs. 300 / sq.ft
7 Panel Board Room 500 sq.ft An average 150,000
uniform cost @
Rs. 300 / sq.ft
8 Toilet space 200 sq.ft An average 60,000
uniform cost @
Rs. 300 / sq.ft
 9 Miscellaneous 1000 sq.ft An average 100,000
space (Drying uniform cost @
platform) Rs. 100 / sq.ft
10 Total 1,720,000

Technology:

The model unit is based on the versatile dal milling technology developed by
Central Food Technology Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore and the machinery
is fabricated under the supervision of the scientists from CFTRI. CFTRI, Mysore
besides providing assistance in the establishment of the dal mills also provides
need based training programme for successfully running these units.

Plant and Machinery:

The details of the nature and type of plant and machinery, their capacity, power
consumption, level of automation varies upon the market needs, nature and type
of the end products and the investment capacity of the entrepreneur.

The details of plant and machinery for the model project are as Precleaner-1 No.;
Dehuskers-2 Nos.; Grader-2 Nos.; Bucket Elevators-4 Nos.; Aspirators and
Blowers-3 Nos.; Control Panels-3 Nos.; Destoner-1 No. and Pedal Mixer -2 Nos.
The total cost of plant and machinery has been estimated at Rs. 9.25 Lakh
( inclusive of the cost of electrical motors for driving the machines). The plant and
machinery proposed are as per design provided by CFTRI Mysore. All these
units are proposed to be arranged in a streamlined layout to give continuity of
operation.

Electrical and other items:

The various machines have to be connected to electrical motors of suitable

power ratings for supplying power to them. Accordingly AC -3 Phase motors of
different power ratings, varying from 2.50 Hp to 7.50 Hp will be required for
powering the various unit operations of the dal mill. The total cumulative Hp
ratings of all these motors will be in the vicinity of 15.50 Hp. The cost of the
electrical motors have been included along with the cost of plant and machinery.
However, a cost of Rs. 50,000/- has also been considered for internal wiring and
associated electrical work.

Miscellaneous fixed assets:

A cost of Rs. 1.30 Lakh under miscellaneous fixed assets has been considered
for meeting the expenses for office furniture, weighing balance/scale, gunny bag
sealing machine, office equipment, fixtures, steel ladders and platforms for
cleaning of machines and equipment etc.

Utilities:

Power

The total connected load for the aforementioned unit will be in the tune of 15.50
Hp or 11.56 kW. In addition to it power requirement to the tune of 1.00 kW will be
required for general lightening. Thus the total power requirement for the model
project will to the tune of 12.56 kW. Accordingly a a suitable power connection of
20 KVA is required.

Water

The total water requirement of the unit will be 500 litres per day. Water is mostly
required for soaking and for moisture treatment of the grain pulses. Apart from it
water is also required for domestic comsumption purpose.

Standby diesel engines, generator sets and other utilities

Suitable standby power arrangement (DG sets of 20 KVA) may be made under
the project. Accordingly a cost provision of Rs. 95,000/- has been made.

Provision for fire fighting:

Necessary provision for fire fighting equipment may be made while installing the
dal mill. Accordingly a cost provision of Rs. 15,000/- has been made.

Provision for Insurance:

Necessary provision for insurance may be made while installing the dal mill.
Accordingly provision for insurance @1% of the original cost of fixed asset has
been made.

Contingencies:

A 5% contingency provision is made for unforseen expenses.

Organizational setup:

A minimum of five permanent employees: Two operators, one accountant cum

store keeper and two watch and ward person are required for the unit. Besides
two skilled and 10 unskilled workers are required under the scheme.
Repayment:

The repayment schedule has been calculated considering the tenure of term loan
to be 9 years , inclusive of a grace period of 2 years.

Interest rates for ultimate borrowers:

we have assumed the rate of interest as 12% p.a.

Security:

Security will be provided as required

Results of financial analysis are as under:

The financial analysis of the investment on the improved dal mill having an
installed capacity of 480 MT/ annum has been attempted and is placed from
Annexures I to VII. The project has a margin money component of 25% with the
rate of interest on term loan and working capital as 12% p.a. and 13% p.a.
respectively. For this project, the financial indicators of the investment are as
under:

Net Present Value @ 15% DF (NPW) = Rs. 12.37 lakh

Internal Rate of Return (IRR) = 25.04 %

Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) = 1.03:1

Average Debt Service coverage Ratio (DSCR) = 1.54:1

 PROJECT REPORT
OF

DAL MILL
(Promoted by Santosh Damodhar Sarda)
At post: Badnapur Dist: Jalna