Summary

Spices and Concentrates is one of the nine focus sectors identified in the government’s National Export Strategy (NES) 2018-2022. The same strategy identifies improving the quality of spices and exporting value-added products instead of raw bulk spices as a more profitable approach having greater and sustainable market penetration potential. The outcomes of the proposed research will directly benefit to Sri Lankan spice producers in small and medium enterprise (SME) sector to produce better quality value-added spices exploiting the opportunities in export markets to bring economic and social development to the country. The proposed research project investigates the temperature generation in conventional spice grinding machines, which are commonly used in SME sector, and its effect on the quality of spices because temperature adversely affects the quality. The conventional grinding machines are not equipped with temperature sensing feature. Therefore, this research aims to build a correlation between grinding time and quality of ground spices for commonly used grinding machines for common Sri Lankan spices like pepper, chili, turmeric, cinnamon, and cardamom having good export potential. This correlation can be used to benchmark standard grinding procedures enabling SME sector to produce better quality value-added spices at low energy cost.

Objectives

General Objective:
Aim of this research is to investigate and reduce the temperature buildups during spice grinding using conventional grinding machines to minimize the loss of volatile compounds and colour of spices during grinding. The achievement of the aim is streamlined through the successive achievement of following objectives.
1. Study of sensing techniques for food temperature sensing and detailed study on the effects of
temperature on the retention of volatile compounds and color of chosen set of spices important
in the Sri Lankan context. 2. Development of temperature sensing instrumentation fitted to the grinding chamber of
conventional spice grinders (plate, disk, and hammer mills) to monitor the real-time
temperature distribution of the inner surface of the grinding chamber with sufficient spatial
and temporal resolution.
3. Investigate the effects of the operating temperature inside the grinding chamber of
conventional spice grinding machines on the loss of volatile compounds and color change.
4. Development of a well-controlled and cost-effective cooling system that can be retrofitted to
existing conventional grinding machines with minimum modifications.

Major Equipment Facilitated by Grant