ABSTRACT

Processing and handling operations dealing with particulate foods depend on its various physical properties such as uniformity, density, friction, size, shape, specific surface area and volume. These properties are important for evaluation of their settling, separation, flow, dissolution and adsorption characteristics. In practice, particulate solids comprise of both regular geometrical shapes and completely random or irregular shapes. Particulate solids in form of free flowing solids, powder, granular, sticky materials, etc., are handled in different food processing operations. Particles with assorted size and shapes commonly arise from its original mass during size reduction operations such as grinding, milling, attrition, cutting, slicing, chopping, abrasion, crushing and extrusion, even with some chemical reactions and other mass transfer operations. Particulate solids having low angle of repose tend to pack rapidly and gives high packing density, almost immediately. The generated signals are processed using scattering models and finally it estimates particle size distribution.