Abstract
The study was aimed to optimize the rice-mixing operation by the dynamic analysis of the mixing process of rice particles in a batch mixer.
In this work, the variation in concentration of the components shown from the surface of flowing down particles was observed dynamically by optical measurement using a CCD video camera. The circulating and mixing characteristics of rice particles in a twin-shell mixer were investigated.
The following conclusions were obtained from the present work:
(1) Operating the mixer at a charge ratio of 0.3 with a running speed of mixer between 15-60rpm, the resulting product of the elapse time of one circulation and the running speed of mixer was almost constant. The same result was obtained with the product of the final mixing time and the running speed of mixer.
(2) Operating the mixer at a running speed of 20rpm with a charge ratio of feed to vessel between 0.2-0.3, the resulting elapse time of one circulation did not change significantly at 11 seconds while the final mixing time increased from 30 to 37.5 seconds. At charge ratio between 0.3-0.4, the elapse time of one circulation decreased from 11 to 9 seconds and the final mixing time did not change significantly at 37.5 seconds.
(3) The final degree of mixing, which was about 90%, did not change significantly with the running speed of mixer and the charge ratio
