Mass-Indices (B-Values) of Legumes, Tuber and Sea Food for Mass-Size Reduction Operations

In an effort to easily use the Orua Antia’s energy and power equations to determine the minimum comminution energy and power requirements of a given material; the mass Index being a constant in these equations is necessary to be provided for materials that could be subjected to comminution. In this study, the mass indices of some selected food materials such as cassava, yam, crayfish, beans and soybeans which finds applications in food industries were evaluated using static impact force technique coupled with graphical and computational approaches. In graphical method Equation 17 obtained from energy expression for mass-size reduction Equation 14 was employed; while Equation 16 which is a combination of Equation 14 and the potential energy Equation 15 was used in the computational method. Also the relative errors of mass indices obtained from these two methods were evaluated. Results showed that computational or graphical method could be used to obtain the mass index of each selected material. It was observed that moisture content had little influence on the value of mass index. Hence, the average mass index per selected food type within its percentage moisture content wet basis range could be utilized in the minimum comminution energy and power Equations 4 to 6 and 12 to 13 respectively, via the equations constants as applicable and expressed as Equations 9, 10 and 11. Further analysis revealed that the average mass indices were 1.71230.5835, 1.89150.6377,20.27043.0846, 18.19601.0337 and 23.77912.3094 for cassava, yam, crayfish, beans and soy beans respectively.