Studies on development of kneader and ball former for Chhana in Rasogolla production Part I: Performance evaluation of Chhana kneader

Chhana, a product obtained by acid coagulation of hot milk followed by draining of whey, is used as a base material for large variety of Indian delicacies including rasogolla. For production of rasogolla, chhana is thoroughly kneaded and made into small balls, which are subsequently boiled in clarified sugar syrup followed by slow cooling in comparatively low concentration sugar syrup. Rasogolla's projected demand is 6000 tonnes in 2009. Kneading is an important step in rasogolla making and at present kneading was done manually. For continuous production of rasogolla, chhana must be kneaded mechanically and very little work has been done. Keeping the above fact in view, an attempt was made to develop a kneader suitable for chhana. Experiments were carried out with three different rotor models at four different peripheral speeds (53.41, 66.76, 80.11 and 93.46 cm/s). The performance of the kneader was evaluated in terms of degree of mixing, uniformity of mixing index, temperature rise and diameter expansion. Kneader model I at a peripheral speed of 93.46 cm/s gave better results than other operating conditions.