Drying of paddy in a commercial scale Laterally Aerated Moving Bed (LAMB) dryer
Drying is a critical part in processing industries such as rice production. Many dryers have been invented but they are all having limitation in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. A novel industrial dryer has been developed called Laterally Aerated Moving Bed (LAMB) Dryer in Uni...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42192/1/24%20PAGES.pdf https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42192/2/FULLTEXT.pdf |
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| Summary: | Drying is a critical part in processing industries such as rice production. Many dryers have been invented but they are all having limitation in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. A novel industrial dryer has been developed called Laterally Aerated Moving Bed (LAMB) Dryer in Universiti Malaysia Sabah. Small scale LAMB dryers were shown to be effective and efficient, however, its applicability in commercial scale has not been ascertained. Hence, this study investigates the scale up design of LAMB dryer with a capacity to dry 2000 kg paddy, fabricate and test it. The scale up strategy involved the utilization of dimension factors used in small LAMB dryers (10 and 40kg capacities) and also intuition as computer simulation was not accessible. The fabrication was outsourced to a local contractor which runs a rice mill business. After troubleshooting and commissioning were completed, the effectiveness and efficiency of the commercial scale LAMB dryer were evaluated by varying the process temperature and also the tempering time, while the air flowrate was fixed. The rice quality was analysed to ascertain the applicability of LAMB dryer in actual commercial operation. The scope of this study includes evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of a conventional dryer used by the rice mill called Inclined Bed Dryer (IBD), a comparison between LAMB dryer and IBD was presented. The results showed that the drying rate of paddy in LAMB dryer was higher, which was 0.53%/hr-1.0%/hr compared to 0.22%/hr in IBD. The drying rates in the LAMB dryer showed that moisture removals in LAMB was faster and resulted in shorter drying duration (8-16 hours). The drying air penetration shows a uniform flow along the heights, the MC at the bottom and middle part shows a steady reduction with time while the top part has a very small to none reduction due to the temperature at the top being lower compared to the bottom. The RH of paddy for both bottom and middle part shows a gradual reduction with MC, and the drying process usually ended when the RH reading reached 40%. RH at the top part on the other hand, fluctuated about the same range (90-99%), with the temperature lower than the set point. The rice quality analysis showed that drying at 45oC with tempering in LAMB dryer produced higher head rice yield (HRY) (80-81.5%) compared to the rest of experiments, the rice colour analysis were comparable among all the samples. In conclusion, this work demonstrated that the commercial scale LAMB dryer worked effectively and efficiently in paddy drying applications and has a great potential to be commercialized. |
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