Texas' First Rice Mill -- Beaumont, Texas

A rice mill is a food-processing facility where paddy is processed to rice to be sold in the market. 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 collected 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 i
Paddy Milling Plants

Manufacturing process

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 Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. ...

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

belt conveyor A conveyor belt is the carrying medium of a belt conveyor system (often shortened to belt conveyor). A belt conveyor system is one of many types of conveyor systems. A belt conveyor system consists of two or more Conveyor pulley, pulleys (somet ...

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 process

The paddy is pre-cleaned again and destoned by a pre-cleaning machine. After cleaning the paddy is moved to dehusker called 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 of maize (corn) as it grows on the plant. Literally, a husk or hull includes the protective ...

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, central h ...

. The whole rice is collected from the Sheller and moved on to whitener. Here, The film coat on the rice which is called bran 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 polisher. The polished rice is destoned by a destoner and the broken rice is separated by a length grader.

Color sortex

The polished full-grain

rice Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima ''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown i ...

is sorted in a

colour sorter Colour sorters or color sorters (sometimes called optical sorters, digital sorters, or electronic colour sorters) are machines used on the production lines in bulk food processing and other industries. They separate items by their colours, detect ...

which removes

black rice Black rice, also known as purple 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 rice, Philippine heirl ...

, 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