How I applied concepts of Mineral Engineering in real life.

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It was my first class in the second year when prof Nikkam Suresh, who was the Head of the department at that time, introduced mineral engineering in a very exemplary manner, which is impossible to forget for any of his students. I found many terms that can be correlated to my life; that's why I chose to be in this field despite recent job loss and unprecedented time where I cannot go to the USA and do my enrolled MS in metallurgy. Whatever the thing is, I invested my five years in this field, and now I want to stick with that.

 

Coming to the main topic, today, my mom gave me the job to make "Dosa." Those who don't know what Dosa is a rice pancake, originating from South India, made from a fermented batter. It is somewhat similar to a crepe in appearance. Its main ingredients are rice and black gram, ground together in a fine, smooth batter with a dash of salt.: Mom was in a hurry, so she didn't find that the mixture was finely ground, and I also didn't say anything to her. I made a few dosas for ma and pa. She recognized the problem that mixture is not perfect, and that's why they are kind of tight but ignored because only we are going to eat that and not the gusts. However, papa was not satisfied with the texture, and he asked my elder brother to take charge of mine.

 

He came as an experienced person going to perform a show in front of everyone, and with him, dad also joined to make a delicious dosa. My father and brother thought Dosa is not getting perfect texture due to the less fluidity it has. Therefore they add lots of water in it and started the procedure of delicious Dosa. The dosa mixture became so fluid that it resists to come up. Not only together they failed to make single Dosa after 5-6 attempts but also gets so frustrating to leave the kitchen. Mom told me to do the Dosa because dada was hungry.

 

Now it's my opportunity to prove my wisdom.  For a few minutes, I thought for a brilliant idea, but I didn't come up with anything. Suddenly, I don't know what exactly happened, but I remembered the lecture of my Prof. Venugopal. In the class of my mineral processing flowsheet designed, he gave the example of roti and Dosa. He said, Making perfect roti or Dosa is in their details. Perfect Dosa and roti can only form if we make a balance in all parameters such as the amount of daal, rice grains, water, salt, particle size.etc., and if we made a small mistake, then the texture, stickiness, and taste will distort.

 

In my case what I got: pulp density of feed slurry was insufficient and small, grain size was significantly moderate to high, which caused less sticky-ness and were unable to make Dosa. Now, What I did was very simple:

    

    Firstly, I add some more daal and ground the mixture in the grinder. Here are two processes that are happening first, one is increasing in pulp density, and the other is a reduction in particle size. As the quantity of grains decreases, more surfaces will add, which will give more stickiness.

 

    Second, as a preconcentration, I give heat for 3 minutes to remove extra moisture. I was aware of the amount of water/fluid is large enough, so I need to make sure the process should remove only excess water. So preheating is a perfect method to remove some water.

 

    Third, at this point, there was negligible stickiness and the perfect amount of fluid, so I had two options; 1) add "ghi" /  butter 2) raw egg. I chose ghi/butter. I remember binders are crucial to make pallets, so here I need more sticky things that could hold small particles, and as the Dosa will form, it should remain within the Dosa. So butter was a good option.

 

In the end, I made three perfect dosas for my brother, which they thought impossible to make. And this is how I made the zero-waste process for Dosa.

 

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