Chemical strategies to mitigate electrostatic charging during coffee grinding

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, lead...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Joshua Méndez Harper, Hendon, Christopher H
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 19.12.2023
Subjects
Beans
Brewing
Coffee
Electric sparks
Electrostatic charge
Electrostatic charging
Grinding
Particle size distribution
Water use
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Summary: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.
ISSN:2331-8422