Process of Producing Parboiled Rice with Different Colors by Fluidized Bed Drying Technique Including Tempering

Abstract

Steamer is utilized to gelatinize rice starch. High pressure or long steaming time is conventionally applied to obtain the dark brown color of the product. A new alternative method to produce dark brown parboiled rice was proposed in this work. High temperature fluidized bed drying technique including tempering was therefore explored to determine the operating condition to meet the requirement of light and dark brown parboiled rice along with high head rice yield. In addition, the couple of heat and mass transfer model was developed to determine the effective moisture diffusion coefficient, the temperature and moisture distributions within a grain kernel during drying. The effective diffusion coefficient was well correlated with grain temperature by Arrhenius equation. The drying temperature and moisture content after drying caused the drop of head rice yield. When the parboiled paddy at the intermediate moisture contents of 22 and 27% d.b. was tempered, the head rice quality was improved while the parboiled rice color was browner. To obtain high drying capacity, high head rice yield, and light brown color, the parboiled paddy should be dried at a maximum allowable temperature of 150 °C and tempered for 30 min. The tempering time should be extended to 60 min for the dark brown parboiled rice.