Performance Evaluation of Rice Mill Plant By a Computer Simulation

A rice mill plant with a capacity of 3 t/h was constructed with automated facilities at Chonnam National University. A simulation model was developed with SLAMSYSTEM for evaluation and improving the rice mill process. The developed model was validated in the views of hulling efficiency, milling efficiency, milled rice recovery, other materials produced, at bottlenecks in the processes. The results of hulling efficiency, milling efficiency, milled rice recovery in the simulation were, respectively, 81.1%, 89,5%, and 73.1%, while those of the actual mill plant were 81.5%, 90.2%, and 73.5%. The simulation results including the rates of other materials(chaff, bran, broken rice, stone, etc) produced in the processes were almost similar with those of the actual process. In the simulation the bottlenecks were found out in the process for separating brown rice and sorting colored rice. These phenomena also appeared in the actual process. It needed to increase the hourly capacities of the brown rice separator and the rice color sorter. As the developed model could well express the automated rice mill plant, it could be used for designing and improving rice mill plants.