Paper No: MBSK 02- 214 An ASAE/CSAE Meeting Presentation

COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT RICE MILLING METHODS

by
Sadegh Afzalinia, Ph. D. Student1 Mohammad Shaker, Research Engineer2 Ebrahim Zare, Research Engineer2
1

Department of Agricultural & Bioresource Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, SK, Canada S7N 5A9
2

Agricultural Research Center of Fars province Zarghan, Shiraz, Iran P. O. Box: 73415-111

Written for presentation at the 2002 ASAE/CSAE North-Central Intersectional Meeting Sponsored by ASAE and CSAE Parktown Hotel Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, CANADA September 27-28, 2002

Summary:
This study was carried out to determine the best rice milling method in the Fars province of Iran. First, the effect of paddy moisture content on milled rice breakage was evaluated. Then four different milling systems were compared and finally economic evaluation was done to justify the economic performance of the selected method. Results of this study showed that the optimum paddy moisture content for milling process was 12 to 14% wet basis (wb) and using three abrasive whiteners in series and one friction whitener as a polisher had the least rice breakage, so this method was the best choice for rice milling operation in Fars province. Economic evaluation also approved the result of method comparison.

Keywords: rice, rice milling system, rice grain breakage, paddy moisture content
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COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT RICE MILLING METHODS

S. Afzalinia1, M. Shaker2 and E. Zare2
1

Department of Agricultural & Bioresource Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, SK, Canada S7N 5A9
2

Agricultural Research Center of Fars province Zarghan, Shiraz, Iran P. O. Box: 73415-111

ABSTRACT
This study was carried out to determine the best rice milling method in the Fars province of Iran. First, the effect of paddy moisture content on milled rice breakage was evaluated. Then four different milling systems were compared and finally economic evaluation was done to justify the economic performance of the selected method. Results of this study showed that the optimum paddy moisture content for milling process was 12 to 14% wet basis (wb) and using three abrasive whiteners in series and one friction whitener as a polisher had the least rice breakage, so this method was the best choice for rice milling operation in Fars province. Economic evaluation also approved the result of method comparison.

INTRODUCTION
Rice kernel is covered by two layers. The most outer layer is called husk (hull) and the inner one called bran. The whole rice kernel before removing these layers called 2

paddy (rough rice). Husk and bran are not eatable; therefore, they must be removed from paddy. Husk has not tightly stuck to the kernel, so it is easily removed from the kernel. When this layer is removed the kernel is called brown rice. Bran is more difficult to be removed from brown rice, because it has tightly attached to the kernel. The process over which the bran is removed from brown rice is called whitening or pearling process. During this process rice kernels are subjected to an intensive mechanical and thermal stresses which cause some damage to the rice kernels and break some of them. There are some parameters such as the type of whitening machine, paddy characteristics, and environmental factors that affect the rice kernel damage and breakage during the milling process. In this study, effect of paddy moisture content and milling system components on rice kernel breakage during milling process was investigated and an economic evaluation was done to determine the most economic system for rice milling process .

LITERATURE REVIEW
Rice kernel breakage during the milling process is affected by different parameters such as paddy harvesting conditions, paddy drying, physical properties of paddy kernels, environmental conditions, and type and quality of milling system components. There are many papers in this area. Davis (1944) reported that the optimum harvesting moisture content for paddy of Caloro variety was 20 to 24%. Pominski et al. (1961) reported that paddy moisture content had significant effect on milling system yield so that for one percent reduction of paddy moisture in the range of 10 to 14%, performance of milling system increased by 0.7 to 3%.

Matthews et al. (1970) reported that rice breakage was mostly due to mechanical stresses rather than thermal stresses. Matthews and Spadaro (1975) evaluated the effect of harvesting method on rice breakage during the milling process. They found that rice breakage of samples that had been harvested by combine was 5% more than that of the manually harvested samples. Matthews and Spadaro (1976) found that rice breakage during the milling process increased with the decreasing kernel diameter. Dilday (1987) reported that rice breakage during the milling process decreased with the increasing paddy moisture content in the range of 12 to 16%. Luh (1991) reported that to have a high quality milling process with reasonable rice breakage, paddy must be harvested at the optimum moisture content and at the suitable stage of maturity. Clement and Seguy (1994) found that long and tiny rice kernels were more susceptible to breakage during the milling process. Peuty et al. (1994) reported that paddy drying conditions affected the rice breakage during the milling process so that rice breakage rapidly increased with the decreasing moisture content of paddy drying air. Autrey et al. (1995) showed that difference between paddy temperature and milling environment temperature decreased the performance of rice milling system. They also found that relative humidity of milling environment had significant effect on milling system yield.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Paddy (rough rice) must be milled after harvesting and drying. In milling process uneatable hulls and bran are removed from paddy and white rice is produced. In general, rice milling process consists of five main operations:

Cleaning
When paddy comes to the milling system it may contain some foreign materials such as stones, stalk, dust, soil particles, and weed seeds; therefore, it is necessary to pass the paddy though a cleaning system. This cleaning system can be a simple sieve or a progressive system.

Shelling
In this stage, the most outer rough shell of paddy is removed. Rubber roll sheller (Fig. 1) is the most common machine that is used for paddy shelling, however friction type whitener is sometimes used as a sheller. Paddy goes between two rubber rollers that are rotating in opposite direction with different velocities. There is a small clearance between the rollers so that when paddy passes through, it is subjected to some shear forces and husk is removed from it.

Figure 1. Rubber roll sheller (Luh 1991)

Whitening
In this process, bran- a tightly attached layer to the brown rice- is removed from rice kernel; therefore, in this stage the maximum mechanical and thermal stresses are applied to the kernel and rice is subjected to the highest rate of breakage. Two most common whitening machines are friction type whitener (Fig. 2) and abrasive type whitener (Fig. 3). In the friction type whitener, rice grains are whitened by contacting against each other, while in the abrasive one bran is removed by abrading the kernels against an abrasive surface.

Figure 2. Friction type whitener (Luh 1991)

Figure 3. Abrasive type whitener (Luh 1991)

Polishing
Whitened rice may still have some loose bran which is removed in this process by polisher. There is a rubber polisher that polishes the whitened rice using a rubber brush, however friction type whitener is sometimes used as a polisher.

Grading
Rice milling process always creates some broken kernels; therefore, these broken kernels must be separated from whole ones by using grading sieves at the end of milling process. This study was carried out at three different parts. At the first part, two type of shelling machines were compared from viewpoint of shelling performance and rice

breakage during the shelling process. The second part was evaluation of the effect of paddy moisture content on rice breakage during the milling process and the final part was the comparison of four different combinations of milling machines from standpoint of rice breakage.

Sheller comparison
Rubber roll Sheller is the most common sheller in Iran, but in some areas of country such as north, friction type whiteners are also used as sheller because of high variable costs of rubber sheller. For this reason, a comparison was done between rubber roll sheller and friction whitener as sheller from viewpoint of shelling performance and rice breakage in Gilan province. Both machines were used at the same conditions and samples were taken from their outlet. Broken kernels were separated from whole kernels and the percentage of rice breakage was calculated by dividing the weight of broken kernels by the total weight of sample. Shelling performance (ratio of the weight of shelled kernels to the total weight of sample) of each sheller was also determined. The rice variety that was used in this research was Safidrood with 6% wb moisture content and t test was used to analyse the data.

Effect of moisture content

This part of study was carried out in Fars province to evaluate the effect of paddy moisture content on rice breakage during the milling process. Three levels of paddy moisture content (8 to 10%, 10 to 12%, and 12 to 14%) were considered. The milling system was consisted of rubber roll sheller, abrasive whitener, and friction whitener as polisher and a local rice variety (Kamfiroozi) was used. Paddy with selected moisture content was entered to the milling system and samples were taken from outlet of each

machine to measure the percentage of rice breakage. Split plot design with two factors (machine type and paddy moisture content) and five replications was used to analyze the data.

Milling methods
Four different combinations of whitener and polishers in the milling system were compared from viewpoint of rice breakage, whitened rice appearance, and economic aspect in Fars province. Considered combinations were as follow: a. Three abrasive type whiteners in series and rubber roll polisher b. Three abrasive type whiteners in series and friction type whitener as a polisher c. Two friction type whiteners in series without polisher d. Four abrasive type whiteners in series without polisher The same sheller, paddy separator, and cleaning and grading systems were used for all treatments. Samples with 100 g weight were taken from system outlet and broken kernels were separated from whole ones and finally breakage percent for each treatment was calculated. Appearance of the whitened rice is an important parameter in rice market value; therefore, samples with one kilogram weight were taken to evaluate the appearance of each treatment output. These samples were marked by nine different experts in the rice market to compare their marketability. Assigned marks were out of 10. In the meantime, economic evaluation was carried out to find the most economic treatment. The rice variety that was used in this study was Kamfiroozi with 12 to 14% moisture content and complete block design with five replications was used to analyze the data.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Sheller comparison
Results of comparing two types of shellers showed that there was a significant difference (p=0.99) between them from viewpoint of rice breakage so that rice breakage resulted from friction whitener as sheller was approximately twice as high as that of the rubber roll sheller, while its shelling performance was only 8.7% higher than that of the rubber roll sheller (Table I). However, shelling performance of friction whitener was higher than that of the rubber roll sheller, using it as a sheller is not recommended because of its high percentage of rice breakage.

Effect of paddy moisture content

The results of the effect of paddy moisture content on rice breakage showed that moisture content had a significant effect on rice breakage so that rice breakage decreased with the increasing paddy moisture content in the tested range (Table II). The range of 12 to 14% was the optimum moisture content for paddy at the time of milling, because the lowest rice breakage was occurred at this range.

Milling methods
The results of this part of study showed that milling method had significant effect (P=0.99) on the rice breakage during the milling process so that the method having friction type whitener had the highest amount of rice breakage and treatment having abrasive whitener without polisher had the lowest amount, however there was no difference between methods containing abrasive whitener without polisher and abrasive whitener with friction whitener as polisher from viewpoint of rice breakage (Table III).

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Results of rice appearance comparison showed that output of the treatment containing three abrasive whitener in series and friction whitener as polisher had the best appearance and marketability and obtained the highest mark (Table IV). Economic evaluation also showed that the method containing three abrasive whitener in series and friction whitener as polisher had the lowest cost to whiten the unit weight of paddy (Table V), therefore it was the most economic method.

CONCLUSSIONS
The results of this study led to the following conclusions: 1. Using friction type whitener as a sheller during the rice milling process was not reasonable, because of causing high rice breakage. 2. The optimum paddy moisture content for the tested variety at the milling time was 12 to 14%. 3. Method containing three abrasive type whitener in series and a friction whitener as polisher had the lowest rice breakage, lowest milling cost, and its output had the best appearance and marketability; therefore, it was the best rice milling system for the tested variety and region.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project was financially supported by Iranian Scientific and Industrial Research Council, so authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of this

council. We also appreciate the help extended by Shahid Khosrow Zaree Company. We thank A. Bordbar, S. Zaree, and A. Ghiaci for their valuable assistance.

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REFERENCES
Autrey, H. S., W. W. Grigorief, A. M. Altschul and J. T. Hogan. 1955. Effect of milling conditions on breakage of rice grains. Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry 3:593-599. Clement, G. and Jl. Seguy. 1994. Behaviour of rice during processing. Agriculture and Development 16:38-46. Davis, L. L. 1944. Harvesting rice for maximum milling quality in California. Rice Journal 47(3):3-4, 17-18. Dilday, RH. 1987. Influence of thresher cylinder speed and grain moisture at harvest on milling yield of rice. Arkansas Acad. Sci. 41:35-37. Luh, B. S. 1991. Rice. I. Production, 2nd ed. New York, USA: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Matthews, J., T. J. Abadie, H. J. Deobald and C. C. Freeman. 1970. Relation between head rice yields and defective kernels in rough rice. Rice Journal 73(10):6-12. Matthews, J. and J. J. Spadaro. 1975. Rice breakage during combine harvesting. Rice Journal 78(7):59-63. Matthews, J. and J. J. Spadaro. 1976. Breakage of long-grain rice in relation to kernel thickness. Cereal Chemistry 53(1):13-19. Peuty, MA., A. Themelin, C. Bonazzi, G. Arnaud, VM. Salokhe and G. Singh. 1994. Paddy drying quality improvement by process optimization. In Proceeding I International Agricultural Engineering Conference, 298-304. Bangkok, Thailand, 6-9 Dec. Pominski, J., T. Wasserman, E. F. Schultz, Jr. and J. J. Spadaro. 1961. Increasing laboratory head and total yield of rough rice by milling at low moisture levels. Rice Journal 64(10):11-15.

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Table I. Average rice breakage and shelling performance of two shellers Sheller type Rubber roll sheller Friction whitener as a sheller Average rice breakage (%) 9.3 17.6 Average shelling performance (%) 83.7 92.4

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Table II. Average rice breakage of milling system at different paddy moisture contents Paddy moisture content (% wb) Average rice breakage (%) 8-10 10-12 12-14 21.64 21.26 17.09

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Table III. Average rice breakage of different milling methods Milling system Two friction whitener without polisher Three abrasive whitener with rubber roll polisher Three abrasive whitener with friction whitener as a polisher Four abrasive whitener without polisher Average rice breakage (%) 25.15 19.05 16.9 16.77

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Table IV. Marketability of whitened rice with different milling methods Milling system Three abrasive whitener with friction whitener as a polisher Four abrasive whitener without polisher Two friction whitener without polisher Three abrasive whitener with rubber roll polisher Average marks (out of 10) 9.49 7.17 5.96 4.35

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Table V. Average rice milling cost of different milling methods Milling system Three abrasive whitener with friction whitener as a polisher Four abrasive whitener without polisher Two friction whitener without polisher Three abrasive whitener with rubber roll polisher Average milling cost (CAN$/kg) 0.014 0.054 0.104 0.107

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