Determination of Short-Grain Rough Rice Drying Kinetics Under Isothermal Conditions Using an Integrated Model

Abstract

The constants of the drying kinetics models of short-grain rough rice were determined under isothermal conditions between a temperature of 40 °C and 100 °C. The initial moisture content of the rough rice was 28.2% dry basis. The results revealed that increasing the drying temperature and drying duration decreased the moisture content of the rough rice. The lowest rough rice moisture content (15.58% dry basis) was achieved at a drying temperature of 100 °C and a drying duration of 6 h. Four well-known models, i.e., Page, Newton, Logarithmic, and Henderson and Pabis, were evaluated. The models were evaluated based on the highest coefficient of determination value; the lowest root means square error, and the Chi-square value. The Page and Logarithmic models fit four and three cases of the seven drying curves, respectively, among the four evaluated models. Accordingly, combining the Page and Logarithmic models in an integrated model resulted in a model that fits all the seven studied curves. Furthermore, increasing the air temperature from 40 °C to 100 °C increased the moisture diffusivity from 1.5517 × 10-9 m2/s to 4.2698 × 10-9 m2/s. As a result, the activation energy value reached 16.43 kJ/mol for short-grain rough rice under the studied drying conditions.