Abstract
This study was performed to evaluate the performances for a concurrent flow rice dryer of pilot scale with devices for circulating rice. The pilot scale dryer with the capacity of 700 kg was developed to obtain design informations for the development of actual scale dryer of holding capacity of 10 tons. Three drying tests were conducted at two temperature levels of $100^{\circ}C\;and\;120^{\circ}C$, and two air flow rates levels of $28.5cmm/m^2\;and\;57.1cmm/m^2$. Drying conditions for Test-1, Test-2 and Test-3 were $100^{\circ}C\;-28.5cmm/m^2,\;120^{\circ}C-28.5cmm/m^2\;and\;120^{\circ}-57.1cmm/m^2}$ respectively. Drying rates were 0.73%(w.b./h) for Test-1, 0.90%(w.b./h) for Test-2 and 1.46%(w.b./h) for Test-3. The crack ratios of brown rice after drying ranged from 2.4% to 8.4%, and increased with the increase of drying rate and airflow rate. The energy consumptions were from 6,225 kJ/kg to 6,993 kJ/kg which was higher than that of conventional cross-flow rice circulating type dryer used in Korea. This results were due to the lower ambient air temperatures of $4.5^{\circ}C\;to\;13.4^{\circ}C$ during drying tests.
