Drying of Paddy for a Community Rice Mill by Vortex Technique in a Cyclone Tank

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental study of drying of paddy by vortex technique in a cyclone tank. The electricity is used to be the heat supply for drying in order to decrease moisture and time of exposing from the sun from 1-2 days in average to be 1 hour. The temperature for drying of paddy was held constant at 80°C. The diameter of drying tank is 0.4m (D). The heights of the drying tank are designed to be adjustable for five-size 1.6m (H/D=4.0), 1.8m (H/D=4.5), 2.0m (H/D=5.0), 2.2m (H/D=5.5) and 2.4m (H/D=6.0) as desired with a set of air nozzles placing circumferentially on the cyclone tank to produce air-swirl flow inside. The ratio of volumetric flow rates of the secondary air to the total air,  was set to be 0.0 and 0.47 for each test condition. The experiment shows the lowest moisture about 15.4% w.b. for 50 minutes when the height of drying tank size is 1.8m (H/D=4.5) and  = 0.47.