Development of Pilot Plant for Cryogrinding of Spices: A Method for Quality Improvement

Abstract

The development of a pilot plant for cryogrinding of spices is discussed in this paper. The unit has an indigenously designed and developed cryogenic screw cooler for optimal utilization of liquid nitrogen along with a digital signal processing system (DSP) for liquid nitrogen spray and automatic temperature control. In the first part, the advantages of cryogrinding over conventional grinding are described. The latter part discusses the details of the pilot plant, along with preliminary experimental studies using pepper as the sample. Experimental results clearly indicate the quality improvement of the cryoground spice in terms of increased volatile oil contents and flavour components.