Rice Processing Machinery

Rice Processing Cycle

Rice processing consists of cleaning, color sorting, polishing and packaging. A series of machines perform various processes. Following is a typical processing cycle.

Intake hopper: The rice is unloaded into the intake hopper where it is to be forwarded to the cleaning section. From the intake hopper, this raw material is forwarded by means of Bucket elevator.

Bucket Elevator: Bucket elevators are used for the vertical movement of the material. The Elevator is fed at the inlet spout and it lifts the raw material by means of the buckets, which are bolted to a belt driven by two pulleys at each end of the elevator (upper end & lower end, called Head & Boot respectively). This bucket bolted belt takes the material up and discharges at the outlet spout.

Feed Bin: The raw material (ricel) is uplifted by means of the elevator and stored into the holding bin (capacity 25 tons) for the further proceeding. The raw material is unloaded into the receiving pit and then the pit is emptied and the raw material is stored into the bin whenever to be processed.

Combination / Pre Cleaner: The raw pulse is first of all fed into the Combination / Pre Cleaner. This machine performs the initial cleaning of the raw material and separates different impurities. The stock is fed into the inlet that oscillates with the machine. The stream of material is directed accurately into the center of the machine and the stock is distributed across the entire width of the screen. The upper screen removes jute threads and other larger particles. The lower screen removes the light particles like bran tips etc. The aspiration channel removes dust and light particles like hull and the aspirated & separated product is collected at the outlet. The dust particles are aspirated out of the system and collected for disposal.

Magnet Separator: It arrests the ferrous material with the permanent magnet arrangements and is laid in such a way that all the material flows evenly distributed over the entire width of its magnetic field.

Hull Separator: It separates the hull/paddy grains from the paddy. This separation is accomplished by passing the grains through a series of baffle compartments (usually Z shaped) mounted on an inclined oscillating table utilizing the difference in the specific gravity, surface, texture of the grains and gravity.

De-Stoner: De-stoner is used to eliminate the stones, metals, glass & other heavy impurities from the rice. It is based & operates on vacuum principle. Vibrating fluid bed gives floating bounce to the incoming materials and thus pulses is continuously separated from heavier materials on specific weight basis.

Thickness Grader: After de-stoning the pulses, an elevator uplifts the pulses to feed to the thickness graders that separate the over/under size grains other than super basmati pulses like beans, red pulses, immature and shriveled grains etc. During the process, the revolving cylindrical screens discharge the smaller/over size grains through the slots of the screens and the mature grains are collected separately.

Polishing section

Bucket Elevator: Elevators are installed before each machine to provide the feed. First the materials are taken at some specific height and collected in feeding tanks up above the machine so that a continuous flow should be available to the machines for processing.

Feeding tank: Also called feed balance bins, with tapered hopper are used to provide continuous and balanced feed to the machinery.

Abrasive Polisher: This polisher is used for shining of pulses with optimum yield. The rice passes through the polisher and it removes the bran by the friction between the paddy rice and the emery roll. The rice enters the polisher and is directed towards the chamber by a screw feeder. The intensity can be controlled by two adjustable means, the counter weights of the retaining outlet and the gap between the emery roll and the screens.

It is also equipped with an aspiration system to efficiently fulfill the task of cooling the pulses and thereby reducing the breakage. It also supports the conveying of bran out from the chamber.

Water Polisher: Water polisher is used for the final polishing of the pulses to produce luster, smooth and dust free pulses surface. This machine removes loose bran & dust from the pulses and increases the degree of shine through the humidity controlled air and friction roll during the process. For humidity, uniform water mist is generated with flow-meter control of flow of air and potable water.

Grading & Color sorting section

Bucket Elevator: Again the polished pulses is transported vertically upward through an elevator for the grading & color sorting.

Rotary Flat Sieve: This machine separates small broken and long grains from the flow of rice. This machine can sift ruce efficiently & accurately, heavy and light impurities, head pulses mixture, large, small and medium broken, tips & bran etc. Working of the machine is more effective when there is a distinct difference in size e.g. the separation of small broken pieces from the pulses bran.

The horizontal circular movement gives rice grains an active play in spacious sieve area, resulting in accurate and speedy sifting. Free moving rubber ball cleaners prevent the mesh from clogging which accelerates the smooth passage of rice through the meshes.

Any combination of the sieve according to the required specification, both in number of sieves and mesh sizes, gives the choice for the combination of best suited to the sifting needs.

Length Grader: Designed for accurate length-wise grading and separation of rice according to the indent size. The rice enters the indent cylinder at the feed inlet situated at the high end of the sloping cylinder. The under size grain is captured by the indents and is carried up as the cylinder revolves until a point is reached where the grain is dislodged by the force of gravity and collected in flared trough screw conveyor and discharged. And the full grain remains in the bottom of the cylinder and is collected separately.

Two segmented indent Cylinders are used for grading the rice into three categories:

- 1st Quality Pulses Full size of rice within standard tolerances

- 2nd Quality Pulses ? size rice

- 3rd Quality Pulses ? to ? size rice and pulses flour

Compressor: It is used to provide compressed air to color sorter and packing scales etc. It is complete with drive arrangements, electric motor, water filter, dryer, pressure gauge and valves etc.

Color Sorter: It is used to separate the discolored grains and hull from the processed ric. Color sorter is an automatic microprocessor controlled, 256 channeled machine that works on light spectrum monochrome principle to separate discolored grains.

Packing scale: An automatic weighing and packing machine used for packing of head pulses. Digitally designed for outer-control control panel, gives very accurate measures. Very efficient and swift operation gives the facility of packing in a short time as compared to the manual weighing and packing.

Nawaz Rice Engineering

Nawaz Akram is the CEO of Nawaz Rice Engineering, Punjab. Nawaz has been involved in the rice industry for last 30 years. His company Nawaz rice engineering manufactures rice and pulse processing machinery. NRE has a foot print in four continents. NRE is hoping to expand its business in United States by 2012.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.