Exercise 6

Milling

1. Rationale

Milling recovery as well as quality of milled product are influenced by crop species, variety,
seed moisture and type of mill.

In rice, this refers to the removal of hulls and bran from palay to produce polished rice.
Depending upon the requirement used, milling operation involves cleaning, hulling, hull separation,
palay separation, whitening or polishing and, to some extent grading (PCARR, 1977).

Good palay contains 22% hull, 6% bran and 72% milled rice (PhilRice, 1992). However, these
values cannot be obtained from ordinary milling facilities due to breakage and poor miling
equipment.

The popular steelhuller or “kiskisan”has a milling recovery of only 60-62% out of the
potential 72%. The rubber roller mill can have as high as 70%, while the cono-type mill has 68%
recovery (PhilRice, 1992).

To obtain the best milling recovery, it is necessary that palay must be cleaned, dried
immediately after harvesting and allowed to temper overnight or longer before milling to minimize
grain breakage (PCARR, 1977). Also, do not mix varieties particularly those with different length,
breadth and thickness of the grain.

2. Mechanics

The students will be made to observe milling operations in rice and corn within the City of
Valencia and the Municipality of Maramag.

3. Data to Gather

Gathered data should include the milling recovery (%) by type of mill. Specifically,

a. Weight (kg) of palay/corn before milling

b. Weight (kg) and subsequent percentage recovery of:
1) Milled rice/corn grits
2) Bran
3) Hull

4. References