Next generation rice processing

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The UK team has engineering innovators at Koolmill, Siemens and Cox & Plant, food scientists and process innovators atNew Food Innovation. Academics at Sheffield Hallam University developing AI based control systems with IOT capability &particle separation scientists and business modellers at SHU and Aston Business School. The Chinese team has a riceequipment manufacturer Quzhou, rice processing expertise at China Grain Wuhan Scientific and academics at JiangNanUniversity.The project duration is 24 months with Project Management and Dissemination led by SHU. Established milling equipmentby Satake & Buhler has reached a limit. Based on old designs, this rice processing machinery has very limited scope fordevelopment.Project description:WP1 Leadership & Project Management Lead: SHU in UK and Quzhou in China. Provision of overall project managementwith technical programme, budget, risk and compliance management, to deliver on time and to budget.WP2 Digital Milling Lead: Koolmill with SHU, Quzhou and Wuhan, will transform Koolmills existing "analogue" system,creating smart milling and the world's first digital fully connected rice mill. A pilot mill will be established at the Quzhoufacility. Performance, connectivity, remote data capture and data analytics will be validated by Wuhan & Jiangnan.WP3 Transport and separation Lead: Cox & Plant. Delivers novel, low damage method for conveying rice, simultaneouslyseparating rice, fines, brokens, bran, and husk. New efficient vertical conveyor will reduce damage & raise reliability.Controllable vibration technology offers on demand feeding to machines avoiding the need for large storage. Cox & Plantare leaders in vibration technology and will work with academics at SHU to develop new advanced systems for riceprocessors.WP4 Scenario Testing Lead: Jiangnan University. Evaluation of process variants (removal of Mycotoxins, temperaturemonitoring, equipment failure, milling adjustments). Jiangnan have wide expertise in processing cereal and Mycotoxins.Supported by Koolmill and Quzhou, this WP will exploit the enhanced controllability of these variants to inform AI systems,to apply diagnostic processes to multiple crop variants and support technology transfer.WP5 IoT Platform Lead: Siemens - who bring global excellence & expertise in data capture and AI in engineeringprocesses. Supported by Koolmill and SHU researchers, machine and mill data from the Koolmill demonstrator will becaptured and connect to a secure cloud based platform. With data analytics, AI, machine learning, auto-tuning and digitaltwins make real time management decision tools to operators, to optimise mill management and production.WP6 Process Implementation and Training Lead: New Food Innovation. NFI have expertise in communicating newproducts in challenging markets. They will utilise a multi-platform approach, including "gamification," milling data, training,demonstrations, piloting, 3D Models, simulations and augmented reality to shift this embedded culture.WP7 Economic Analysis and Development of the Chinese Market Lead: Aston. Make the technology accessible, fromconventional sales to Advanced Manufacturing Services (AMS) business model. Aston is globally recognised as a leaderin AMS and Wuhan has unrivaled expertise of Chinese rice. The development of AMS, "pay as you mill" business modelmitigates two major barriers to adoption of the technology (1) the perceived technology risk - the technology risk passes toQuzhou and (2) the perceived Capex Cost - moving the cost from capex to opex. This WP is linked to WP5 and the abilityto remotely control machines. WP8 Exploitation & Dissemination Lead: SHU. This WP reports the key outcomes from theproject and maximises the dissemination and IP from the project outcomes through national networks.