Newton Fund: Enhanced Rice Milling and Maximised Valorisation of Rice Milling By-products

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The UK project team has engineering innovators and manufacturers at Koolmill and KMF, rice processors and traders at East End Foods, microwave designers at Process Technologies and food scientists at Marlow Foods and New Food Innovation group. These companies will be supported by academics at NCEFE (Sheffield Hallam University) developing bran processing and investigation and evaluation of rice husk ash production and application, testing and exploitation in India. The Indian project team has a rice equipment manufacturer and distributor Vishavkarma Machine Tools, rice processor Rajdhani Rice and Kuantum Papers Ltd who will process the rice husks. The team is supported by research institutions IIT Roorkee who will project manage the Indian team and lead the work on rice husk ash utilisation. Punjab Agricultural University and NABI-CIAB will investigate the valorisation and processing of the rice bran. Project description - WP 1 focusses on Project Management of the consortium and delivery of each of the work packages. WP2 Rice milling: Developing the technology to make a step change in rice milling capability. Koolmill will develop new milling capability in cooperation with KMF, NCEFE and East End Foods to significantly enhance rice milling capability and demonstrate the capability of the new process with respect to conventional mills. The technology will be evaluated for implementation in India by Vishavkarma Machine Tools and Rajdhani Rice supported by technical expertise at Punjab Agriculture University. Additional investigations will be conducted by Process Technologies to identify microwave technology to provide high efficiency drying of the rice paddy and bran stabilisation prior to processing. Koolmill will develop enhanced control of bran removal to support the bran exploitation route. Working with KMF, NCEFE and Punjab Agriculture University, Koolmill will investigate the quality standards resulting from the enhanced processes as well as the financial models for the utilisation of the technology in the Indian market. WP3 Bran processing: This work package provides new value and new food products from the rice crop. The WP will research, test and evaluate extraction techniques for proteins and carbohydrates from the rice bran. The initial work will integrate appropriate technology to stabilize the bran. This will be followed by technical development of extraction processes by NCEFE, NABI-CIAB and Marlow Foods. This team will then further exploit these materials into new food products with the additional input by New Food Innovation. WP4 Rice husk ash: An investigation and development of technologies to extract and utilise materials from rice husk ash to exploit in building products. Extending previous work, NCEFE and IIT Roorkee will work with Kuantum Paper Mill and the rice milling operator Rajdhani Rice to refine the capability of burning below 850 degC and gasification of rice husk to produce a safe and reactive amorphous ash for incorporation into building materials (concrete and alkali activated cementitious materials) and products. The alkali activated materials (geopolymers) will not use high CO2 generating Portland cement. WP5 Evaluation of system performance: Working closely with the industrial partners in the UK and India, NCEFE, NABI-CIAB, Punjab Agriculture University and IIT Roorkee will provide access to technical resources that will evaluate the economics, energy consumption efficiency and technical capability of the project's investigations and equipment development in the three main project areas of rice milling capability, bran removal and rice husk ash extraction and utilisation in building materials. WP6 Knowledge Transfer and Dissemination: This activity disseminates the project outcomes, identifies IP exploitation and supports training and education for rice producers and millers in India through national networks and reports the key outcomes from the project.