1Research Scholar, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, Delhi, India.
2Senior Scientist, Division of Post Harvest Technology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, Delhi, India. (skj_ageg@iari.res.in)
3Senior Scientist, Division of Agricultural Economics,, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, Delhi, India.
4Head, Division of Agricultural Engineering, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, Delhi, India.
Online published on 16 October, 2013.
Water absorption characteristics of paddy (PB1121) were evaluated over a temperature range 40 to 80oC. The equilibrium moisture content of the grain during water absorption varied from 48.24 to 55% (d.b.). Average critical moisture content of PB1121 for soaking during parboiling was 41.67% (d.b.). Average moisture diffusivity during water absorption process was 5.06x10−10 m2.s−1 and activation energy was 53.85 kJ.mol−1. Modelling of water absorption behaviour using Page model revealed that it ftted well at individual temperatures (R2>0.9). However, the Generalized Page model provided poor performance with R2 of 0.65, MSE 0.0018 and mean relative deviation modulus (% P) 48.02, whereas multi-layer perceptron neural network model ftted well with R2 =0.99, MSE =0.0013 and P =14.69%.
Diffusivity, Activation energy, Page model, Neural network model
