MOobDELING Far INFRARED DryING OF RouGH RICE T. M. Afzal and T. Abe Far infrared drying of grain is fundamentally different from either convection or conduction drying. Thin layer drying data were obtained for 30 °C inlet air temperature at three radiation intensities, inlet air velocities and initial moisture levels, Intensity level had the greatest effecton the drying rate followed by inlet air velocity. The simple exponential Newton ‘model adequately followed the track of the observed moisture content. The Page model, however, gave the closer prediction. Predictive models independent of initial moisture content, relating radiation intensity and inlet air velocity to describe far infrared drying of rough rice are presented. Key Words: Far infrared, Drying, Rice, Modeling ABOUT THE AUTHORS: ‘Tabassumn M. Afzal is a graduate student and Takemi Abe is 4 professor affiliated with the Department of Biomechanical ‘Systems, Faculty of Agriculture, Ehime University, Tarumi 3-5-7, Matsuyama-shi 790, Japan. Manuscript received May 5, 1996. Accepted for publication December 17, 1996. © International Microwave Power Institute 80 Journal of Microwave Power and Electromagnetic Energy tying of agricultural products has been an area D of great concem in the past. Artificial drying was adopted as an alternate approach to sun drying and expanded rapidly. Researchers have been interested in developing and improving drying tech- niques with the greater emphasis on higher rates of drying. Among the three modes of heat transfer conduc- tion and convection have been extensively studied. Radiative transfer by far the quickest mode has received less practical application in agriculture. Efforts have been made to determine the drying characteristics of, important crops in electromagnetic energy spectrum {Shivare,et.al,, 1994; Nindoand Bekkiet.al., 1994; John and Otten, 1989]. Numerous models have been proposed to describe the rate of moisture loss during thin layer convective drying of agricultural crops. The simple exponential ‘model analogus to Newton’s Law of cooling in heat transfer is often used to describe the grain moisture loss [Lewis, 1921]. This model assumes negligible internal resistance which means no resistance to moisture move- ment from within the material to the surface of the material. It considers only the surface resistance imply- ing that all the resistance is concentrated in a layer at the surface of the material. This empirical model is as follows; Mom.) Integration of the above equation yields the following form. a) M = moisture content (% dry basis) at any time = initial moisture content (% dry basis) Jl; = equilibrium moisture content (% dry basis) k =drying constant, I/hr ime, hr Similar models have been used by many investigators [Allen, 1960; Hukill, 1947; Simmonds, et. al., 1953; Vol. 32 No. 2, 1997Sharaf-Eldeen, et. al., 1979]. Equation 1 was also used to study differences in drying characteristics of white and yellow dent com [Ross and White, 1972]; effect of relative humidity on high temperature drying of com (Westerman, et. al., 1973]; drying behavior of fully exposed popcom [White, et.al., 198 1a]; and simulation of agricultural dryer performance [O’Callaghan, et. al., 1971), Page (1949] suggested the following model that is a modified form of the Equation (1) with an additional exponent; Where, MR = moisture ratio M_ = moisture content at any time, % dry basis ‘M, = initial moisture content, % dry basis Mg = equilibrium moisture content, % dry basis K = empirical drying constant, I/hr N= empirical drying exponent t = time, hr A number of investigators have used the Page model to describe thin layer drying rates of paddy and other grains [Agrawal and Singh, 1977; Wang and Singh, 1978; Misra and Brooker, 1980; Li and Morey, 1984; White et.al., 1981b; Chhinnan, 1984; Pathak, et.al, 1991). A considerable amount of work has been reported in the. literature on thin layer convective drying and modeling of agricultural crops. Very little information however is available on far infrared drying of rough rice. The research presented in this paper focuses on the applica- tion of farinfraredenergy to determine drying character- istics of rough rice. ‘The main objectives of this study were: (1) toexperi- mentally determine the drying kinetics at various levels of radiation intensity, inlet air conditions and initial moisture level, and (2) to test the ability of empirical drying models to predict the far infrared drying kinetics of rough rice. Materials and Methods ‘The experimental set-up has been shown schematically in Figure 1. The test chamber was a vertical plywood. column of 53 x 42 cmcross section and 58 cm high. The insulated walls were formed from aluminized stee! and wood panels with a 2.5 cm thick asbestos layer between International Microwave Power Institute them. A door was provided to the test chamber which allowed insertion or removal of the sample. Specifica- tions of the infrared heater were 200 volt, 750 Watt and 30x40 cm in size. The sample tray was 20 x 20x 6.cm made of wire mesh elevated about 5 cm from the bottom of the chamber was placed parallel to the infrared heater. The distance between the infrared heater and paddy sample was 15 cm and was kept constant through all the experiments. Type-K thermocouples were inserted at two loca- tions (side and center) to record infrared heater tempera- ture. Type-T thermocouple was used to measure the rice grain temperature. The radiation intensity was varied by independently regulating the electric power tothe heater through slidac. Prior to each test the voltage to the infrared heater was adjusted to achieve desired heater temperature. ‘The system was run with a dummy sample for suffi- cient length of time (80-100) minutes to ensure steady state conditions indicated by non varying heater and air temperature inside the drying chamber. When the de- sired equilibrium had been established, air was stopped and dummy sample was replaced with the test sample. The heater surface temperature at two locations, grain temperature, air temperature and relative humidity of power regulator @ power meter (@) adjustable screws @ infrared beater © AD converter @ personal pomputer © grain container © balance @ pocket computer ® printer FIGURE 1: Schematic diagramof the experimental set-up. 81incoming, outgoing and that of inside the drying cham- ber were continuously recorded at one minute intervals throughout the drying test run. An arrangement was made (o continuously record the weight of the grain sample throughout the test. The balance was set to integrate the weight over three-second periodand send the signal to pocket computerto be recorded and printed. Fresh (naturally moist) Japonica rough rice with moisture content of 35 % dry basis was received from Ehime University Farm. To obtain higher moisture levels samples were rewetted for 24 hours and then aerated for an hour to remove free moisture clinging to the grains. These samples tightly packed in polythene bags and sealed in plastic jars were stored in the freezer at 4°C. Paddy samples of low moisture level (25 % dry basis) were obtained by ambient drying under shade. ‘These samples were also stored in the freezer in the same way. Samples of 400 grams were used for all drying experiments. Moisture content was determined by dry- ing triplicate samples of 5 grams at 135°C for 24 hours in an air oven and values were calculated on a dry basis. A total of 54 drying tests were performed comprising two replicates at each radiation intensity; 0.167, 0.333 and 0,500 w/em?; inlet air velocity 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 m/s; and initial moisture levels of 25, 35 and 4741 % dry basis. Since in earlier experiments [Afzal and Abe, 1996] inlet air temperature did not influenced drying rate over the range of 30 to 40°C, all these experiments were conducted only at an inlet air temperature of 30°C. Results and Discussion Typical drying curves showing moisture. content vs. time at 35% initial moisture and selected radiation intensity levels are shown in Figure 2. Convective dry- ing is indicated by 0.0 w/cm?. Evidently, moisture reduction rates are higher and drying times are substan- tially lower under the far infrared regime than in a convection situation. ‘The simple exponential model and Page model com- prising of Equations (1) and (2), respectively are pro- posed to describe the drying behavior. These equations were fit to thin layer drying data from the experiment. ‘The drying constant k for Equation 1 along with residual mean square and coefficient of determination, r, were determined for each drying run. Actual values of M, Mg and t for each test were available from the experimental 82 Journal of Microwave Power and Electromagnetic Energy Inlet air velocity = 0.5 m/s Initial moisture content = 35 % d.b. Radiation intensity 1 0.000 w/em4, 2 0.167 w/em? 3 0333 w/om’, 40500. w/em’ Moisture content, percent dry basis Time, hr FIGURE 2: Far infrared drying curves of rough rice at different radiation intensity levels. data. Equilibrium moisture contents (M,) were esti- mated from the following equations [Afzal and Abe, 1996]. M, = -11.317(R) + 5.993 V = 0.3 m/s M, = - 14.072(R) + 7.8159 V = 0.5 nvs M, = - 13.683 (R) + 8.613 V = 0.7 ms (3) Where, M, = equilibrium moisture content, (% dry basis) R= radiation intensity, (w/cm?) V__ = inlet air velocity, (m/s) Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was used to find equations that adequately relate the drying constant, , with the radiation intensity R (w/cm?), inlet air veloc- ity V (m/s) and initial moisture content IMC (% dry basis). Inall the resulting equations, k was not dependent on initial moisture content. The following simple rela- tionship was therefore selected. K =a +a) (R) -a (RX V) where, @) Vol. 32 No. 2, 199788.074 x 103, a = 22.7304 x 10°!, ay = 89.1256 x 10? ‘The coefficient of determination, r2, value for Equation (4) was 0.992 with standard error of 0.0236. To determine the parameters K and N Equation (2) was transformed into the following linear form; In¢-In MR) = In K +N (In) ©) Linear regression techniques were used to obtain values of K and N by fitting this equation to the experimental data, Excellent fits were obtained foreach setof test data with most values of the regression coefficient equal to 0.99 orbetter in all cases. To generalize, the dependence of drying constant K and N on the independent variables of radiation intensity, inlet air velocity and initial mois- ture level, step wise multiple regression technique was used. Again, K and N were not dependent on the initial moisture content. The following two simple equations were selected for constants K and N among many other choices. K=by +b) (R)+b,(V)+b,RxXV) © N=co +c (R) -c2 (V) aM Where, bo = -17.8318 x 10°, by = 25.1406 x 10"1, b = 20.8818 x 102, b; = -14.935 x 101 10.904 x 10-1, = 61.3425 x 10, -45.13 x 102 The coefficient of determination, r2, values forthe above Equations (6) and (7) were 0.986 and 0.884 with standard error of 0.0316 and 0.04359, respectively. Equations (4) and (6),(7) represent the mathematical relationships that can be used to estimate the parameters of the exponential model and Page model, respectively. Experimentally observed values of moisture content were compared with values predicted for a number of drying tests covering a range of radiation intensities, inlet air velocities and initial moisture levels in Figures 3,4.and 5. The results demonstrate that both the models presented track the observed moisture contents well through the entire period of each run. However, the justification of the empirical relation- 7 International Microwave Power Institute ship is the satisfactory fit to the experimental data. The adequacy of these two models can be further evaluated by plotting the observed moisture contents versus the. predicted moisture contents. If the model closely pre- dicts the observed moisture contents the linear regres- sion line should fall near the perfect line (ie Y = X). Figures 6 and 7 shows the regression lines between predicted and observed moisture contents for three dif- ferent test conditions for model | and model 2, respec- tively. Regression equations for the lines in Figure 6 and 7 are displayed in Table 1. The slopes of the lines with model 2 are near one and the Y-intercepts are near zero. ‘Therefore, it is evident that the Page model is more suitable to describe far infrared drying characteristics of rough rice, Conclusions 1. Far infrared thin layer drying data were obtained for short grain Japonica rough rice. The data under 30 °C inlet air temperature spanned a range of radiation in- tensities:0.167,0:333,0.50wlem? inletair velocities: 03, 30 inlet air velocity = 0.3 m/s Initial moisture content = 25 % d.b. — Moisture content observed 2 x predicted with model 4 £2 © predicted with model 2 £ 40.167 wiom? 2 2 0.333 wien? i 20 z 8 gis = 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 Time, hr FIGURE 3: Application of Model I and Model 2 to describe far infrared drying of rough rice at different radia- tion intensity levels. 83Radiation intensity = 0.333 w/em ? Initial moisture content Moisture content, % dry basis far infrared drying of rough rice at different inlet air velocities. Predicted moisture content, % dry basis 35 %db. — Moisture content observed x predicted with model 4 © Predicted with model 2 4 V=07 ms 2V=05 mis 3 V=0.3ms Moisture content, % dry basis Time, br moisture levels. Radiation intensity = 0.50 wicm? Inlet air velocity = 0.5 mis — Moisture content observed x predicted with model 4 © predicted with model 2 Time, br FIGURE 4: —_ApplicationofModel land Model 2todescribe_ FIGURE 5: Application of Model I and Model 2 to describe far infrared drying of rough rice at different intial ° Z 20 £ , q § eZ a. z |. . ann ae FIGURE 6: Regressionlinesforpredictedmoisturecon- FIGURE 7: _ Regression ines for predicted moisture con- tents with Model 1. 84 tents with Model 2. Journal of Microwave Power and Electromagnetic Energy Vol. 32 No. 2, 1997Ne “Test conditions ‘Model 1 Model 2 R v IMC? m © F mi e T0167 03 2 0998 ~«032—~=«C«RSC«GSC*CCOST SSCL 2 0333 os 350.999 0.953 1090999099704 3 0500 07 = 4807030895 1.190.999 0.998031 [R= radiation intensity, wlem? V= inlet air velocity, m/s IMC = initial moisture content, % dry bas 1? = coefficient of determination, dimensionless 0.7 m/s and initial moisture levels: 25, 35, 48 % (dry basis). 2. The use of far infrared energy to dry rough rice resulted in much faster drying than by convection. Intensity level had the greatest effect on the drying rate followed by inlet air velocity. 3. Two empirical drying models were used to describe the drying curves. The simple exponential model ad- equately followed the track of the observed moisture content. The Page model, however, predicted the drying data with greater accuracy. 4, Suitable mathematical expressions as Equations (4) and (6), (7) are presented. These equations can be used tocalculate the parameters of the exponential and Page model, respectively, to describe far infrared drying of rough rice. References Afzal, T.M. and Abe, T. 1996. Infrared radiation drying of paddy. Submitted to Japanese Society of Agricul- tural Machinery. Agrawal, Y.C. and R.P. Singh. 1977. Thin layer drying studies on short grain rough rice. ASAE Paper No. 71-3531, St.Joseph, MI: ASAE. Allen, J. R. 1960. Application of grain drying theory to the drying of maize and rice. Journal of Agric. Eng. Res. 5 (4) 363-385. Chhinnan, M.S. 1984. Evaluation of selected math- ‘ematical models for describing thin layer drying of in-shell pecans, Trans. ASAE, 610-615. International Microwave Power Institute TABLE 1: Linear regression of observed and predicted ‘moisture content. Hukill, W.V. 1947. Basic principles in drying com and grain sorghum, Agric. Engg, 28 (8) 335-338, 340. John, C. St. and Otten, L. 1989. Thin layer microwave dying of peanuts. Canadian Agric. 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