Effect of air intake temperature on drying time of unhulled rice using a fluidized bed dryer

Rice is one of the important food crops in Indonesia. It is known as a staple food of Indonesian society. The consumption patterns of rice are slowly but surely increase with increasing income, education and access to information. Increasing demand for rice in the country reaches 1.6% per year. One of the problems that arise in the process of rice production is the drying process. Generally, the unhulled rice drying process in Indonesia is carried out directly in the sun. This method has many limitations. In this study, the drying method used is a fluidized bed. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of the intake air temperature and unhulled rice mass on drying time. The intake air temperatures used were 40, 45, 50 °C. The results show that the fastest drying process to obtain the final moisture content of 13.1% from the initial moisture content of about 22% is achieved using the intake air temperature of 50 °C. The drying process takes about 40 min; however, the increased drying process speed is not linearly with the increase in the intake air temperature.