Study of moisture transport in rice cooking

Abstract

In an era where the conservation of energy is paramount, one cannot overlook the substantial amount of energy consumed by domestic cooking processes. Rice cooking is one of them, in the East in particular, where rice is a staple food. In this work, pre-soaking and boiling processes of white raw rice were investigated through experimentation followed by CFD simulation. Temperature profiles while boiling and the moisture gain during cooking were obtained. The findings reconfirmed the two underlying mechanisms, i.e., gelatinization-driven cooking at lower temperatures, and, diffusion-driven cooking at elevated temperatures. Moreover it was revealed that by fine-tuning the rice cooking process, the cooking duration could be reduced by nearly 15%, saving the cooking energy as much. Finally the moisture diffusion coefficient was accurately modeled using the OpenFoam software.