In many years, the Ministry of Science and Technology has been encouraging the commercialization of scientific research and discovering the potential teams. This research plan is under the long-term support of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the boss of Chant Oil Company, Prof. Tsun-Hsu Chang and Dr. Hsien-Wen Chao at NTHU have been created and achieved the first microwave roasting applicator of coaxial rotation in the world.

For the microwave heating, it spends 6 to 10mins to bake the coffee beans between 300g and 600g and the applicator don’t need to preheat absolutely. For the conventional heating, it spends 35mins to bake the coffee beans and preheat the applicator. The baking time of microwave roasting applicator is 60% lower than that of conventional heating applicators. The microwave roasting applicator is less than one-third dissipated power of conventional heating applicators. The weight of this proposed applicator is less than that of conventional heating applicators. It can be customizable design, a small applicator can be designed for home or professional persons, and a large applicator can be designed for industrial mass production. This proposed applicator is very suitable to heat those granular materials. In addition to coffee beans, other beans, nuts, vegetables and fruits are also suitable to dry or bake.

This plan is derived from the MOST 107-2622-M-007-003-CC1 of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Initially, the plan of MOST 107-2622-M-007-003-CC1 is designed a microwave reactor to accelerate the reacting rate of biodiesel and this reactor is more than 2~3 times the reactive rate of conventional reactor. Then, this microwave reactor of biodiesel is expanded to other applications such as chemical synthesis, material heating treatment……etc.

This reactor was employed to bake the coffee beans for the first time in 2017, the experimental result proved the feasibility of coffee baking. Improving the microwave reactor and combining with the technology of rotary joint of the HF Lab from 2017 to 2020 have been developed a novel type of applicator for the coffee baking. This applicator is characterized by a rotary cavity, the advantages of which are time-saving, labor-saving and energy-saving related to conventional heating methods. The degree of coffee baking employed in this applicator is more uniform than that in conventional heating applicators.

The proposed applicator had been already obtained the patents of Taiwan, USA and China in 2020. In the future, the applicator can sell in the roasters and small coffee roasting shops in the short term and it can enter the larger baking factories in the long term.

Contact:

Ai-Chia Hsu,
Assistant Researcher, Department of Natural Sciences and Sustainable Development
Tel: (02)2737-7985
E-mail： achsu@nstc.gov.tw