Moisture Dependent Physical Properties of Black gram

Abstract

Physical properties of Black gram are important during harvesting, cleaning and drying with machines and also during improvement of these machines. This study was conducted to evaluate some moisture-dependent physical properties of Black gram namely, grain dimensions, thousand grain mass, surface area, sphericity, bulk density, true density, porosity and angle of repose. As the moisture content increased from 8.696% to 21.951% d.b., the three axial dimensions of the Black gram increased and the arithmetic and geometric mean diameter ranged from 3.736 ± 0.14 to 4.276 ± 0.14 mm and 3.797 ± 0.13 to 4.322 ± 0.13 mm respectively. The hundred grain mass of Black gram were 42.52 ± 1.03 and 48.18 ± 0.45 kg. The sphericity values of Black gram increased from 79.69% to 82.82%. The bulk and true densities values for Black gram decreased with increase in moisture content. The porosity and angle of repose of Black gram increased from 38.06 to 42.60% and 28.4 to 32.2° respectively with increase in moisture content from 8.696% to 21.951% d.b.