Physical and Thermal Properties

of Cereal Grains
Introduction
• Data on physical properties of grain are essential for the design of
equipment for handling, aeration, and storage, as well as processing cereal
grains and other agricultural materials.
• Basic thermal and moisture transport properties are also required for
simulating heat and moisture transport phenomena during drying and
storage.
• The most important such properties are the grain weight, sphericity,
roundness, size, volume, shape, surface area, bulk density, kernel density,
fractional porosity, static coefficient of friction against different materials
and angle of repose, heat capacity, thermal conductivity, thermal
diffusivity, moisture diffusivity, equilibrium moisture content, and latent
heat of vaporization
1000-Grain weight:
• In handling and processing of grains, it is customary to know the
weight of 1000 grain kernels.

• The 1000 grain weight is a good indicator of the grain size, which
can vary relative to growing conditions and maturity, even for the
same variety of a given crop.

• When compared with other crops at the same moisture level, the
1000 kernel weight will also provide an idea of relative size of the
kernel for handling purposes.
Sphericity and Roundness:

• Accurate estimation of shape-related

parameters is important for determination of
terminal velocity and drag coefficient.
• It is also important to know the shape before
any heat or moisture transport analysis can
be performed.
• Sphericity is defined as the ratio of the
surface area of a sphere, which has the same
volume as that of the solid, to the surface
area of the solid.
• Roundness of a solid is a measure of the sharpness of its corners and
is defined as the ratio of the largest projected area of an object in its
natural rest position to the area of the smallest circumscribing circle.

• Higher values of sphericity and roundness indicate that the object’s

shape is closer being spherical.
• The following relation is used for
the calculation of sphericity and
roundness of the grain:

• where dc and Ac represent the

diameter and area of the
smallest circumscribing circle,
respectively, di denotes the
diameter of the largest
inscribing circle. Ap is the
projected area of the grain.
Bulk Density:
• The bulk density of cereal grains is determined by measuring the
weight of a grain sample of known volume.
• The grain sample is placed in a container of regular shape, and
the excess on the top of the container is removed by sliding a
string or stick along the top edge of the container.
• After the excess is removed completely the weight of the grain
sample is measured.
• The bulk density of the grain sample is obtained simply by
dividing the weight of the sample by the volume of the container.
• The bulk density gives a good idea of the storage space required
for a known quantity of particular grain
Kernel density:
• The kernel (true) density of grain is defined as
the ratio of the mass of a grain sample to the
solid volume occupied by the sample.
• For the determination of kernel density of an
average grain, two methods have been
suggested: one involved the displacement of a
gas, whereas the other used displacement of a Ex: Wratten et al
liquid. 1969, Check density
-Long rice and
medium rice
 Porosity:
• It is defined as the percentage of
volume of inter-grain space to
the total volume of grain bulk.
• The porosity of grain is an
important parameter that
affects the kernel hardness,
breakage susceptibility, milling,
drying rate, and resistance to
fungal development.
• Porosity depends on (a) shape,
(b) dimensions and (c)
roughness of the grain surface.
Angle of Repose:

• The flowing capacities of different grains

are different. It is characterized by the
angle of natural slope.

• The angle of repose is the angle between

the base and the slope of the cone formed
on a free vertical fall of the grain mass to a
horizontal plane.
 • The coefficient of friction between
granular materials is equal to the
Coefficient of Friction: tangent of the angle of internal
friction for the material.
• The Static and dynamic coefficients
of friction of grains on metals,
wood, and other materials are
needed for the design and
prediction of grain motion in
harvesting and handling
equipment.
• These parameters are also
important in determining the
pressure of grain and silage against
bin walls and silos.
• The frictional co-effiicient depends
on (a) grain shape, (b) surface
characteristics and (c) moisture
content.
Thermal Properties
• The raw foods are subjected to various types of thermal treatment namely
heating, cooling, drying, freezing etc., for processing.

• The change of temperature depends on the thermal properties of the

product.

• Therefore knowledge of thermal properties namely, specific heat, thermal

conductivity, thermal diffusivity is essential for the design of different
thermal equipment's and for solving various problems on heat transfer
operation.
Specific Heat:

• Specific heat of a substance is defined as the amount of heat required

to raise the temperature of unit mass through 1 οC.
• In mathematical form, specific heat Cp, is written as

Cp=Q/m. dT

where Q is the amount of heat, Ex: Dutta et al 1988

m is the mass of material, and Light weight and
dT is the change in temperature. heavy weight grains
Thermal Conductivity:

• The thermal conductivity is defined as the amount of

heat flow through unit thickness of material over an unit

area per unit time for unit temperature difference.

• Thermal conductivity of food materials depends on its

chemical composition as well as the structure of the
sample, and because of this the measurement of
thermal conductivity of food materials is difficult and
more challenging than specific heat measurement
Thermal diffusivity:

• Thermal diffusivity indicates how fast heat can penetrate through the
material under transient condition of heat-transfer conditions.

• Physically it relates the ability to conduct heat with its ability to store
heat.

• The thermal diffusivity can be calculated by dividing the thermal

conductivity by the product of specific heat and mass density.