8.

3 Size Reduction

Glossary :

 Size reduction or ‘communition’ : Size reduction or ‘communition’ is the unit operation

in which the average size of solid pieces of food is reduced by the application of
grinding, compression or impact forces.

 Crushing efficiency ηc : Crushing efficiency is defined as the ratio of the surface energy
created by crushing to the energy absorbed by the solid.

 Rittingers Law: Rittingers states that the work required in crushing is proportional to the
new surface area created.

 Critical speed: The speed at which centrifuging occurs in ball mill is called the critical speed.

Introduction

In the food industry, raw materials and intermediate products must often be submitted to size
reduction operations such as cutting , chopping , grinding , milling and so on.In the case of
liquids and semi-solids, size reduction operations include mashing ,atomizing , homogenizing
etc. Size reduction or ‘communition’ is the unit operation in which the average size of solid
pieces of food is reduced by the application of grinding, compression or impact forces. When
applied to the reduction in size of globules of immiscible liquids (for example oil globules in
water) size reduction is more frequently referred to as homogenization or emulsification. The
size reduction of liquids to droplets is done by atomization.

8.3.1Application of size reduction

The following are some important applications of size reduction in the food industry:
● Milling of cereal grains to obtain flour
● Fine grinding (refining) of chocolate mass
● Flaking of soybeans prior to solvent extraction
● Cutting of vegetables and fruits to desired shapes (cubes, strips, slices…)
● Fine mashing of baby food
● Homogenization of milk and cream.

8.3.2 Objectives
Size reduction is a widespread, multipurpose operation. Its may serve a number of different
objectives, such as:

 Accelerating heat and mass transfer (flaking of soybeans or grinding coffee in preparation
to extraction, atomization of milk as a fine spray into hot air in spray-drying)
 Facilitating separation of different parts of a material (milling wheat to obtain flour and
bran separately, filleting of fish)
 Obtaining a desirable product texture (refining of chocolate mass, meat grinding)
 Facilitating mixing and dispersion (milling or crushing ingredients for dry mixing,
homogenization of liquids to obtain stable emulsions)
 Portion control (slicing cold-cuts, bread, cakes)
 There is an increase in the surface-area-to-volume ratio of the food which increases the
rate of drying, heating or cooling and improves the efficiency and rate of extraction of
liquid components (for example fruit juice or cooking oil extraction.
 A similar range of particle sizes allows more complete mixing of ingredients (for
example dried soup and cake mixes.
 Obtaining pieces and particles of defined shapes (cubing meat for stew, cuttingpineapple
to obtain the familiar wheel-shaped slices, cutting dough to make.In addition, size
reduction of food at the moment of consumption (mastication) has a decisive effect on the
perception of food quality.

8.3.3 Size reduction of solid foods

8.3.3.1 Theory
In all types of size reduction there are three types of force used to reduce the size of foods:
1. Compression forces
2. Impact forces
3. Shearing (or attrition) forces.
In most size reduction equipment, all three forces are present, but often one is more important
than the others. When stress (force) is applied to a food the resulting internal strains are first
absorbed, to cause deformation of the tissues. If the strain does not exceed a certain critical level
named the elastic stress limit (E), the tissues return to their original shape when the stress is
removed, and the stored energy is released as heat (elastic region (O–E) in Fig. 8.5).
 Fig. 8. 5 Stess-strain diagram for various foods.

(E = elastic limit; Y = yield point; B = breaking point; O–E = elastic region; E–Y =
inelastic deformation; Y–B =region of ductility; (1) = hard, strong, brittle material; (2) =
hard, strong, ductile material; (3) = soft, weak,ductile material and (4) = soft, weak brittle
material.)

However, when the strain within a localised area exceeds the elastic stress limit, the food is
permanently deformed. If the stress is continued, the strain reaches a yield point (Y). Above the
yield point the food begins to flow (known as the ‘region of ductility’ (Y– B) in Fig. 8.5).
Finally, the breaking stress is exceeded at the breaking point (B) and the food fractures along a
line of weakness. Part of the stored energy is then released as sound and heat. As little as 1% of
applied energy may actually be used for size reduction. As the size of the piece is reduced, there
are fewer lines of weakness available, and the breaking stress that must be exceeded increases.
When no lines of weakness remain, new fissures must be created to reduce the particle size
further, and this requires an additional input of energy. There is therefore a substantial increase
in energy requirement as the size of the particles is reduced. It is important to specify the
required size distribution in the product to avoid unnecessary expenditure of time and energy in
creating smaller particles than are required for a particular application.

The amount of energy that is needed to fracture a food is determined by its hardness and
tendency to crack (its friability) which in turn depends on the structure of the food. The fewer the
lines of weakness in a food, the higher is the energy input needed to cause fracturing. Harder
foods absorb more energy and consequently require a greater energy input to create fractures.

Compression forces are used to fracture friable or crystalline foods; combined impact and
shearing forces are necessary for fibrous foods, and shearing forces are used for fine grinding of
softer foods. It is thought that foods fracture at lower stress levels if force is applied for longer
times. The extent of size reduction, the energy expended and the amount of heat generated in the
food therefore depend on both the size of the forces that are applied and the time that food is
subjected to the forces.

Other factors which influence the energy input are the moisture content and heat sensitivity of
the food. The moisture content significantly affects both the degree of size reduction and the
mechanism of breakdown in some foods. For example, before milling wheat is ‘conditioned’ to
optimum moisture content and maize is thoroughly soaked and wet milled in order to obtain
complete disintegration of the starchy material. However, excessive moisture in a ‘dry’ food can
lead to agglomeration of particles which then block the mill and very dry foods create excessive
dust which causes a health hazard, and is extremely inflammable and potentially explosive.

Substantial amounts of heat are generated in high-speed mills. The heat sensitivity of the food
determines the permissible temperature rise and the necessity to cool the mill. In cryogenic
grinding, liquid nitrogen or solid carbon dioxide are mixed with foods (for example spices)
before milling, to cool the product and to retain volatiles or other heat sensitive components.
Solid carbon dioxide is also used to cool meat during size reduction in the manufacture of
sausagemeat.

The energy required to reduce the size of solid foods is calculated as follows:

8.3.3.2 Energy consumption

The total energy consumption of a mill consists of two parts: the energy imparted to the milled
material and that needed to overcome friction in bearings and other moving parts of the mill. The
energy transferred to the material corresponds to the work of deformation and is stored in the
particle as internal stress. When the particle fractures, the stored energy is released. Part of it
provides the increment in surface energy resulting from increased surface area but most of it is
released as heat. Eventually, friction losses also generate heat. Consequently, size reduction may
result in considerable increase in the temperature of the treated material. Temperature rise as a
result of size reduction may be an important technological issue, particularly with heat-sensitive
products, thermoplastic substances and materials with high fat content. When necessary, this
problem is addressed by air- or water-cooling of the machine or using cryogenics such as liquid
nitrogen (cryo-milling).
Crushing efficiency ηc is defined as the ratio of the surface energy created by crushing to the
energy absorbed by the solid.
The energy absorbed by a unit mass of the material is

Where,
e-surafce energy per unit area
Ap-area per unit mass of product
Af- area per unit mass of feed
The input energy (E) requirement for size reducing machine is greater than the energy absorbed
by the solid (Ea). Some part of energy is used to overcome friction in the moving parts and
bearings of machine, rest is used for crushing. The ratio of the energy absorbed to the input
energy is known as the Mechanical efficiency ηm.

The power required by the machine can be calculated by the following equation

Where
Dp and Df-volume surface mean diameter of the product and feed respectively
Φp and ϕf- spericity of product and feed respectively
Ρp-oarticle density
f-feed rate
when a feed is reduced to symmetrical particles of s smaller size as shown in fig.8.6 , the energy
requirements must be related to some function of the size of the feed and ground product. As per
assumption both the particles are symmetrical , a common dimension I used to calculate renergy
requirement
 Fig 8.6 Reduction of feed to symmetrical smaller particle

Therefore, the energy required for size reduction is

Rittingers Law: a Crushing law proposed by Rittingers states that the work required in crushing
is proportional to the new surface created. Rittingers assumed that size reduction is essentially a
shearing procedure, therefore, energy requirement is proportional to the square of the common
linear dimension and thus the values of ‘n’ becomes 2. The energy requirement is given by the
following equation

Where, Xp and Xf-lenngth of product and feed, respectively

Kicks law: kicks proposed another law which based on stress analysis of plastic deformation
within the elastic limit. He assume that the energy requirements for size reduction is a function
of a common dimension of the material, therefore the value of ’n’ becomes 1, and the energy
requirements can be given by the following equation
Rittinger’s equation is said to fit better fine milling while Kick’s expression describes better
coarse grinding. It has been found, experimentally, that for the grinding of coarse particles in
which the increase in surface area per unit mass is relatively small, Kick's Law is a reasonable
approximation. For the size reduction of fine powders, on the other hand, in which large areas of
new surface are being created, Rittinger's Law fits the experimental data better.

Bond’s Law: Bond reported a method for estimating the power required for crushing and
grinding operation. According to this law the work required to form particles of size ‘D p’ from
very large feed is proportional to the square root of the surface to volume ratio of the product.

Where

k-constant depends on machine type and material being handled.

For use of above equation the work index (wi) for the material being reduced is defined. The
work index is the gross energy requirement in kilowatt-hour per tone of feed needed to reduce a
very large feed to such a size that 81% of the product passes through a 100µm screen

Where,
P-Power, kW
f-feed rate, t/h
Dp-80%of product passes through mesh of dia Dp, mm
Df-80%of feed passes through mesh of dia Df, mm
wi-work index
Solve the Problems:

1. In a milling experiment it was found that to grind 4 mm sized grains to 0.401 mm. the
power required was 6KW, feed rate of milling is 200 kg/h. find thepower requirement for
milling for the same into 0.57 mm using rittingers and kicks law.

2. In a wheat milling experiment it was found that to grind 4.33 mm sized grains to IS sieve
35 (0.351 mm opening), the power requirement was 8KW. Calculate the power
 requirement for milling of wheat by the same mill to IS sieve 15 (0.157 mm opening)
using 1. Rittinger’s law and 2. Kick’s Law. Feed rate of milling is 200kg/hr.

3. How much power is required to crush 2t/hr. of a material id 80% of the feed passes
through IS sieve No.50 (0.5 mm opening)? Given the work index of the material as 6.30.

8.3.3.3 Equipment for Size Reduction of solid food

8.3.3.3.1 Size reduction of dry foods

There are a large number of mills available for specific types of food.

Size reduction equipment is divided into crushers, grinders, ultra fine grinders, and cutting
machines.

Crushers do the heavy work of breaking large pieces of solid material into small lumps. A
primary crusher operates on run-of-mine material, accepting anything that comes from the mine
face and breaking it into 150 to 250-mm lumps. A secondary crusher reduces these lumps to
particles perhaps 6 mm in size.

Grinders reduce crushed feed to powder. The product from an intermediate grinder might pass a
40 mesh screen; most of the product from a fine grinder would pass a 200 mesh screen with a 74
μm opening.

An ultra fine grinder accepts feed particles no larger than 6 mm; the product size is typically 1 to
50 μm. Cutters give particles of definite size and shape, 2 to 10 mm in length.

These machines do their work in distinctly different ways. Compression is the characteristic
action of crushers. Grinders employ impact and attrition, sometimes combined with
compression; ultrafine grinders operate principally by attrition.

Crushers

Crushers are slow-speed machines for coarse reduction of large quantities of solids. The main
types are
 jaw crushers,
 gyratory crushers,
 smooth-roll crushers, and
 toothed-roll crushers.
The first three operate by compression and can break large lumps of very hard materials, as in
the primary and secondary reduction of rocks and ores.

Jaw Crusher

In a jaw crusher the feed is admitted between two jaws, set to form a V open at the top. One jaw
is stationary; the other, driven by an eccentric, reciprocates in a horizontal plane and crushes
lumps caught between the jaws.

In a gyratory crusher a conical crushing head gyrates inside a funnel-shaped casing, open at the
top. An eccentric drives the shaft carrying the crushing head. Solids caught between the head and
the casing are broken and re-broken until they pass out the bottom.

Figure 8.7 a) Jaw Crusher b) Gyratory crusher

1.Feed; 2.Product
Fig 8.8 Schematic diagram of a. smooth roll crushre; b. serrated roll crusher

Grinders

The term grinder refers to a variety of size reduction machines for intermediate duty. Product
from a crusher is often fed to a grinder for further reduction. Some of the commercial grinders
are hammer mills, impactors, rolling compression machines, attrition mills, and tumbling mills.

Disc mills

There are a large number of designs of disc mill, each employing shearing forces for fine
grinding or shearing and impact forces for coarser grinding. For example:

• Single-disc mills in which food passes through an adjustable gap between a stationary casing
and a grooved disc, which rotates at high speed

• Double-disc mills which have two discs that rotate in opposite directions to produce greater
shearing forces (Fig 8.9)

• Pin-and-disc mills which have intermeshing pins fixed either to the single disc and casing or to
double discs (Fig. 8.10a.) These improve the effectiveness of milling by creating additional
impact and shearing forces.

Fig 8.9 Vertical disk mill

Hammer mills
These mills all contain a high-speed rotor turning inside a cylindrical casing. Usually the shaft is
horizontal(Fig 8.11). Feed dropped into the top of the casing is broken and falls out through a
bottom opening. In a hammer mill, the particles are broken by sets of swing hammers pinned to a
rotor disk. A particle of feed entering the grinding zone cannot escape being struck by the
hammers. It shatters into pieces, which fly against a stationary anvil plate inside the casing and
break into still smaller fragments. These in turn are rubbed into powder by the hammers and
pushed through a grate or screen that covers the discharge opening.

Fig.8.10 a.Pin and disc mill b.Roller mill

Figure 8.11 Hammer mill

Several rotor disks, 150 to 450 mm in diameter and each carrying four to eight swing hammers,
are often mounted on the same shaft. The hammers may be straight bars of metal with plain or
enlarged ends or with ends sharpened to a cutting edge. Intermediate hammer mills yield a
product 25 mm to 20-mesh in particle size. In hammer mills for fine reduction, the peripheral
speed of the hammer tips may reach 110 m/s; they reduce 0.1 to 15 tons/h to sizes finer than 200-
mesh. Hammer mills grind almost anything-tough fibrous solids like bark or leather, steel
turnings, soft wet pastes, sticky clay, hard rock. For fine reduction they are limited to the softer
materials.

The capacity and power requirement of a hammer mill vary greatly with the nature of the feed
and cannot be estimated with confidence from theoretical considerations. Commercial mills
typically reduce 60 to 240 kg of solid per kilo watt hour of energy consumed.

Ball Mill

In a ball mill or pebble mill, most of the reduction is done by impact as the balls or pebbles drop
from near the top of the shell. In a large ball mill the shell might be 3 m in diameter and 4.25 m
long. The balls are 25 to 125 mm in diameter; the pebbles in a pebble mill are 50 to 175 mm. A
tube mill is a continuous mill with a long cylindrical shell, in which material is ground for 2 to 5
times as long as in the shorter ball mill. Tube mills are excellent for grinding to very fine
powders in a single pass where the amount of energy consumed is not of primary importance.
Putting slotted transverse partitions in a tube mill converts it into a compartment mill. One
compartment may contain large balls, another small balls, and a third pebbles. This segregation
of the grinding media into elements of different size and weight aids considerably in avoiding
wasted work, for the large, heavy balls break only the large particles, without interference by the
fines.
 Fig 8.12 Ball mill

Segregation of the grinding units in a single chamber is a characteristic of the conical ball mill
illustrated in above Figure 8.12. Feed enters from the left through a 60°one into the primary
grinding zone, where the diameter of the shell is a maximum. Product leaves through the 30°
cone to the right. A mill of this kind contains balls of different sizes, all of which wear and
become smaller as the mill is operated. New large balls are added periodically. As the shell of
such a mill rotates, the large balls move toward the point of maximum diameter, and the small
balls migrate toward the discharge. The initial breaking of the feed particles, therefore, is done
by the largest ball dropping the greatest distance; small particles are ground by small balls
dropping a much smaller distance. The amount of energy expended is suited to the difficulty of
the breaking operation, increasing the efficiency of the mill.

The load of balls in a ball or tube mill is normally such that when the mill is stopped, the balls
occupy about one half the volume of the mill. The void fraction in the mass of balls, when at rest,
is typically 0.40. The grinding may be done with dry solids, but more commonly the feed is a
suspension of the particles in water, increasing both the capacity and the efficiency of the mill.

When the mill is rotated, the balls are picked up by the mill wall and carried nearly to the top,
where they break contact with the wall and fall to the bottom to be picked up again. Centrifugal
force keeps the balls in contact with the wall and with one another during the upward movement.
While in contact with the wall, the balls do some grinding by slipping and rolling over one
another, but most of the grinding occurs at the zone of impact, where the free falling balls strike
the bottom of the mill.

The faster the mill is rotated, the farther the balls are carried up inside the mill and the greater the
power consumption and the capacity of the mill. If the speed is too high, however, the balls are
carried over and the mill is said to be centrifuging. The speed at which centrifuging occurs is
called the critical speed.

From a balance between the gravitational and centrifugal forces, the critical speed nc may be
found from the equation

The operating speed n must be less than nc.

Roller mills

Roller mills are widely used to mill wheat. Two or more steel rollers revolve towards each other
and pull particles of food through the ‘nip’ (the space between the rollers) (Fig. 8.10b). The main
force is compression but, if the rollers are rotated at different speeds, or if the rollers are
fluted,additional shearing forces are exerted on the food. The size of the nip is adjustable for
different foods and overload springs protect against accidental damage from metal or stones.

Ultra Fine Grinders

Many commercial powders must contain particles averaging 1 to 20 μm in size, with

substantially all particles passing a standard 325-mesh screen that has openings 44 μm wide.
Mills that reduce solids to such fine particles are called ultra-fine grinders. Ultra fine wet
grinding is done in agitated mills.

8.3.3.3.2 Size reduction of fibrous foods

Cutting machines

In some size reduction problems the feed stocks are too tenacious or too resilient to be broken by
compression, impact, or attrition. In other problems the feed must be reduced to particles of fixed
dimensions. These requirements are met by machines known as granulators, which yield more or
less irregular pieces, and cutters, which produce cubes, thin squares, or diamonds.

Cutters and choppers

Cutting and chopping are size reduction operations based on shearing through the use of sharp-
edged moving elements (knives, blades). The term ‘cutting’ is usually forms(cubes, juliennes,
slices), while the term ‘ chopping ’ is applied mainly to random cutting. The variety of cutting
machines used in the food industry is vast. In the majority of cases, cutting is done by revolving
knives or saws. Following are some examples of cutting and chopping machines:

● An interesting system is used for cutting potatoes in the French-fry industry. Peeled potatoes
are hydraulically conveyed at high velocity through a tube and thrown against a stationary set of
knives in quadratic array. The system has a number of advantages over other methods of cutting:

1. There are no moving parts

2. Hydraulic conveying orients the potatoes along their long axis. The long strips thus obtained
are preferred by the market

3. Hydraulic conveying provides cutting and washing (removal of released starch granules) in
one step.

● The silent cutter ( Figure 8.13 ) is widely used in the meat industry for simultaneous chopping
and mixing. A batch of the material to be processed is placed in a horizontal revolving dish. The
dish circulated the material through a set of horizontal revolving knives. Another related type of
machine is the bowl mixer cutter. similar in action to the kitchen blender or food processor.
 Fig 8.13 Silent cutter

It is extensively used in the meat industry but also as a high-energy blender inthe production of
salads and even as a dough kneader.

● Meat grinders/choppers : this familiar machine is available in a vast range ofcapacities and
variations. Basically, a worm (screw) conveyor forces the meatagainst one or more revolving
knives and perforated plates .The necessity to use knives and blades for cutting presents two
problems:

● Theefficiency of the cutting machine strongly depends on the sharpness of theknives. Although
the blades are made of special metals, loss of sharpness isalways a problem, requiring costly
maintenance.

A bowl chopper (Fig. 8.14) is used to chop meat and harder fruits and vegetables into a pulp (for
example for sausagemeat or mincemeat preserve). A horizontal, slowly rotating bowl moves the
ingredients beneath a set of high-speed rotating blades. Food may be passed several times
beneath the knives until the required degree of size reduction and mixing has been achieved.
Fig. 8.14 Bowl chopper: 1, cutting blades; 2, cover; 3, rotating cutter bowl; 4, casing; 5, rotating
unloader disc; 6, main motor.

Slicing and flaking equipment

The growth of the chilled sandwich market has stimulated development of high speed slicers for
both cutting bread precisely from corner to corner and for slicing fillings. In some designs (Fig.
8.15) food is held against the slicer blades by centrifugal force and each slice falls away freely.
This eliminates the problems found in earlier cutters, where multiple knife blades caused
compression of the food and damage as it passed between the blades. High speed cutters are used
to slice bacon and ‘wafer thin’ cooked meats at up to 2000 slices per minute and vegetables at up
to 6 tonnes per hour. Newer designs are computer controlled and can be programmed easily by
operators to bulk slice and stack a range of products including cheeses, pizza toppings, cooked
meats, cucumber and tomato, and then apply them onto sandwich bread. Meats are also cut using
circular rotary knives with a blade at right angles to the path of the meat. An ‘intelligent’ cheese
cutter weighs and measures each block to determine the maximum number of portions that can
be cut to the required weight with the minimum amount of waste.\

Harder fruits such as apples are simultaneously sliced and de-cored as they are forced over
stationary knives fitted inside a tube. The blade advances with the product on the conveyor to
ensure a square cut edge regardless of the conveyor speed or cut length. The size of the cut can
be adjusted from the control panel, without mechanical adjustment or downtime. Flaking
equipment for flaked fish, nuts or meat is similar to slicing equipment. Adjustment of the blade
type and spacing is used to produce the flakes.
Fig 8.15(a) Slicing equipment; (b) dicing equipment

Dicing equipment

Cubing/dicing is done by cutting along three mutually perpendicular planes. In the machine
shown in Figure 8.15 the material is first cut into ‘slices’ . In the second stage, the slices are cut
longitudinally to produce ‘strips’ . In the third and final stage, the strips are shortened to produce
‘cubes ’ For dicing, vegetables, fruits and meats are first sliced and then cut into strips by
rotating blades. The strips are fed to a second set of rotating knives which operate at right angles
to the first set and cut the strips into cubes (Fig.8.15(b)).

Shredding equipment

Typical equipment is a modified hammer mill in which knives are used instead of hammers to
produce a cutting action. A second type of shredder, known as the squirrel cage disintegrator,
has two concentric cylindrical cages inside a casing. They are fitted with knife blades along their
length and the two cages rotate in opposite directions.

Food is subjected to powerful shearing and cutting forces as it passes between them.

Pulping equipment

This uses a combination of compression and shearing forces for juice extraction from fruits or
vegetables, for cooking oil production and for producing pure´ed and pulped meats. For example
a rotary fruit crusher consists of a cylindrical metal screen fitted internally with high-speed
rotating brushes or paddles.

Grapes, tomatoes or other soft fruits are heated if necessary to soften the tissues, and pulp is
forced through the perforations of the screen by the brushes. The size of the perforations
determines the fineness of the pulp. Skins, stalks and seeds are discarded from the end of the
screen. Other types of pulper, including roller presses and screw presses, are used for juice
expression or cold extraction of cooking oils.

Size reduction of liquid food

Effects on foods

 Solid foods

 Texture of many food (ex. Bread, hamburger or juices) is controlled by the conditions
during size reduction

 There is indirect effect on the aroma and flavour of foods

 Loss of volatile constituents from spices and some nuts w/c is accelerated if temperature
is allowed to rise during milling.

 Release of cellular materials provide a suitable substrate for microbial growth that can
result off-flavours and aromas.

 Has little or no preservative effect on food

 disruption of the cells and resulting to increase surface area promotes oxidative
deterioration and higher rates of microbiological and enzymatic activity.

 oxidation of fatty acids and vitamin A during size reduction.

 Losses of Vit. C and thiamin in chopped or sliced fruits and vegetables are substantial

Liquid foods

 Viscosity or Texture

 in many liquid and semi-liquid foods, the desired mouthfeel is achieved by careful
selection of the type of emulsifying agent and stabilizer and by control over
homogenization conditions.Color, Aroma, Nutritionl Value and Shelf Lfe

 Color, Aroma, Nutritional Value and Shelf Life

 Milk – homogenization reduces the average size of fat globules from 4 um to less
than 1 um, thereby giving the milk a creamier texture.

 Cream – Air is incorporated to produce a foam. Liquid fats released from globules
at the surfaces of air bubbles, and this binds together clumps of solid fat to form
butter.

 Chilling, Freezing and Baking which is necessary to extend the shelf life,
may cause changes to nutritional value.

Benefits in Food Processing

• Increase surface to volume ratio-increase rate of drying, heating, cooling, etc.,

• Increase efficiency and rate of extraction (juice, oil)

• Mixing, solubility

• Combined with screening-predetermined range of particle size

• Improve the further processing

• Facilitating transport

• Increase the range of product

• No preservative effect

Disadvantages/Limitations

 Disruption of the cells and resulting to increase surface area promotes oxidative
deterioration and higher rates of microbiological and enzymatic activity.

 Increased energy requirement

 The cost of equipment increases significantly with the size reduction and the cutting
precision;

 Changes in taste and flavor, e.g., due to increased oxidation of products (nuts) and color
(bleaching of flour); increase with the length of storage; aroma loss, due to escape of
volatiles, caused by heat production during grinding;

 loss of nutrients, e.g., vitamins during dicing or slicing of fruits, and bran during
polishing of rice;

 influence on texture, e.g., softening due to increased enzyme activity, or hardening due
to juice loss, when cells are broken down

 Increase of microbial attack, e.g., due to increase of the product specific surface and
release of nutritive substances.