A rice mill is a food-processing facility where paddy (unmilled rice) is processed by cleaning the grain, removing the hull, sorting, and packing the rice, leaving it in its final form for sale to consumers.

Process

The entire product is procured from paddy fields, milled and processed hygienically in modern machinery and dust-free environment and cleaned through sorting machines.

Paddy procurement

Paddy is harvested from the fields to be processed. The paddy is again rechecked before the process begins. The procured paddy is checked bag by bag by a team and stored in Paddy Milling Plants.

Cleaning and boiling

To start with the production process, paddy is cleaned by a paddy pre-cleaning machine and the cleaned paddy is stored in raw paddy storage bins. The stored paddy is moved to food-grade stainless steel soaking tanks. Water is drained from the tank and the wet paddy is ready for boiling. Boiling is done by a

steam boiler file:Dampfkessel für eine Stationärdampfmaschine im Textilmuseum Bocholt.jpg, An industrial boiler, originally used for supplying steam to a stationary steam engine A boiler or steam generator is a device used to create steam by applying heat ...

. The boiled paddy is then moved to the paddy dryer through a belt conveyor.

Dryer

The boiled wet paddy is dried in a food-grade stainless steel paddy drier using hot air. The heat energy for the drier is generated using a heat exchanger that uses steam from the boiler. Using a steam heat exchanger will sustain the real aroma of the paddy. These are indirect heat exchangers so there is no chance of smoke air entering the drier. The dried paddy is ready for hulling.

Hulling

The dried paddy is cleaned again and destoned by a pre-cleaning machine. After this second cleaning step, the paddy is moved to a

rice huller A rice huller or rice husker is an agricultural machinery, agricultural machine used to automate the process of removing the chaff (the outer husks) of grains of rice. Throughout history, there have been numerous techniques to hull rice. Trad ...

, also known as a dehusker or sheller. The outer covering of the paddy, the

husk Husk (or hull) in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed. In the United States, the term husk often refers to the leafy outer covering of an Ear (botany), ear of maize (corn) as it grows on the plant. Literally, a husk or hull includes t ...

is removed here and is used as a fuel for the

boiler A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, centra ...

. If the finished product will be sold as

brown rice Brown rice is a whole grain rice with only the inedible outer hull removed. This kind of rice sheds its outer hull or husk but the bran and germ layer remain on, constituting the brown or tan colour of rice. White rice is the same grain without ...

, the product is moved directly to the sorting and packing steps from here. For

white rice White rice is milled rice that has had the husk, bran, and germ removed. This alters the flavor, texture and appearance of the seed; helps prevent spoilage (extends its storage life); and makes it easier to digest. After brown rice is milled ...

, the whole rice is collected from the sheller and moved on to the whitener. Here, the film coat on the rice, which is called

bran Bran, also known as miller's bran, is the component of a Cereal, cereal grain consisting of the hard layersthe combined aleurone and Fruit anatomy#Pericarp layers, pericarpsurrounding the endosperm. Maize, Corn (maize) bran also includes the p ...

is removed from the rice and the bran is collected separately. The whitening process is done by a whitener. The whitened rice is polished by a silky

rice polisher A rice polisher is a machine for buffing (or "polishing") kernels of rice to change their appearance, taste, and texture or for transforming brown rice into white rice. Use Rice polishers are used after the rice has gone through the whitenin ...

. The polished rice is destoned again by a destoner and the broken rice is separated by a length grader.

Color sorting

The polished full-grain

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

is sorted in a colour sorter which removes

black rice Black rice, also known as purple rice or forbidden rice, is a range of rice types of the species '' Oryza sativa'', some of which are glutinous rice. There are several varieties of black rice available today. These include Indonesian black ri ...

, yellow rice, and white belly. Then, the rice is moved to the packing section.

Packing

The processed rice is then packed in woven sacks and is ready to be sold in the market.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Rice mills Rice production