Published In
ArXiv preprint
Document Type
Pre-Print
Publication Date
12-2023
Subjects
Granular electrification
Abstract
The process of grinding coffee generates particles with high levels of electrostatic charge, causing a number of detrimental effects including clumping, particle dispersal, and spark discharge. At the brewing level, electrostatic aggregation between particles affects liquid-solid accessibility, leading to variable extraction quality. In this study, we quantify the effectiveness of four charge mitigation strategies. Our data suggests that adding small amounts of water to whole beans pre-grinding, or bombarding the grounds with ions produced from a high-voltage ionizer, are capable of de-electrifying the granular flows. While these techniques helped reduce visible mess, only the static reduction through water inclusion was found to impact the brewing parameters in espresso format coffee. There, wetting coffee with less than 0.05 mL / g resulted in a marked shift in particle size distribution, in part due to preventing clump formation and also liberating fine particles from sticking to the grinder. With all other variables kept constant, this shift resulted in at least 15% higher coffee concentration for espresso extracts prepared from darker roasts. These findings pose financial and sustainability implications, and encourage the widespread implementation of water use to de-electrify coffee during grinding.
Rights
© Copyright the author(s) 2023
Locate the Document
DOI
10.48550/arXiv.2312.03103
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41047
Citation Details
Published as: Harper, J. M., & Hendon, C. H. (2023). Chemical strategies to mitigate electrostatic charging during coffee grinding. arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.03103.
Description
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in arXiv preprint arXiv. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in arXiv preprint arXiv.