Loosening method and loosening device for cooked rice

Abstract

A device includes a loosening room into which cooked rice is fed, an air blowing port which is configured to blow high-speed air toward the cooked rice in the loosening room; and a collecting room provided adjacent to the loosening room with a wall therebetween, the high-speed air is blown from the blowing port and is blown to the cooked rice in the loosening room such that the cooked rice is scatted and floated by blowing the air, and the cooked rice floating and moving over the wall is collected by the collecting room.

Claims

1. A cooked rice loosening method comprising: feeding cooked rice into a loosening room; continuously advancing the loosing room; blowing high-speed air to the cooked rice in the advancing loosening room, the speed of the high-speed air being sufficient to scatter and float the cooked rice in the advancing loosening room; scattering and floating the cooked rice in the advancing loosening room; and gradually reducing an amount of the cooked rice in the advancing loosening room by collecting the scattered and floated rice in a collecting room provided adjacent to the advancing loosening room.

2. The cooked rice loosening method according to claim 1, wherein the loosening room and the collecting room are partitioned by a wall, and the cooked rice floated by the high-speed air moves over the wall into the collecting room.

3. A cooked rice loosening device comprising: a loosening room, which in operation, receives cooked rice and is transferable along a transfer path; an air blowing port provided in plural above the transfer path, which in operation, blows high-speed air toward the cooked rice in the loosening room, a speed of the high-speed air being sufficient to scatter and float the cooked rice received in the loosening room; a collecting room adjacent to the loosening room and at a side of the transfer path of the loosening room; and a wall between the loosening room and the collecting room, wherein the high-speed air blown from the blowing port causes the cooked rice to be scattered and floated, and the floated cooked rice moves over the wall into the collecting room.

4. The cooked rice loosening device according to claim 3, wherein a top plate is provided above the loosening room at a position higher than the wall provided between the loosening room and the collecting room such that a gap is formed between the top plate and the wall.

5. The cooked rice loosening device according to claim 3, wherein the speed of the high-speed air blown from the air blowing port is between 50 m/s and 100 m/s.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

(1) FIG. 1 is a side view of a device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

(2) FIG. 2 is a front view (entrance side) of the device shown in FIG. 1.

(3) FIG. 3 is a transparent view of the device shown in FIG. 1 down to a conveyor floor surface when viewed from above.

(4) FIG. 4 is an explanatory view of a loosening method of the present invention using the device shown in FIG. 1.

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

(5) Hereinafter, there will be described an embodiment of a device according to the present invention and a loosening method next. The following embodiment is just an example of the present invention, and thus, of course, changes and modifications can be added properly along the gist of the present invention.

(6) FIG. 1 is a side view of the device, FIG. 2 is a front view thereof and FIG. 3 is a transparent view thereof down to a conveyor upper surface when viewed from above.

(7) In the drawings, a wide belt conveyor 1 has a width a and is wound around rollers 11, 12, and the conveyor 1 is moved in an endless manner in the arrow direction while the roller 12 is rotated by a motor (not shown). On the conveyor 1, there are provided two rows of screens 2 in the width direction, and the screens 2 have a width b and arranged at regular intervals. As the conveyor 1 is moved, the screens 2 are also moved.

(8) Meanwhile, above the conveyor, in a section c, narrow tubular blowing nozzles (air blowing ports) 31 are hung down from a chamber 3, so that high-speed air can be blown down vertically toward the conveyor 1. The top portion of the chamber 3 is connected to a duct (not shown), and the duct is connected to a blower (not shown) for blowing out high-speed air. The blowing nozzles 31 are arranged in a large number densely in the conveyor advancing direction within the section c in the device side view (FIG. 1) and are arranged densely within the width b of the screen 2 on the conveyor in the front view (FIG. 2). That is, the blowing nozzles 31 are arranged in a belt-like manner in an area having the width b and length c and are not arranged in other areas.

(9) A tunnel-shaped top plate (cover) 4 is fixed to the base of the conveyor or the chamber 3 in a section d so as to cover the upper surface of the conveyor 1. The upper surface of the top plate 4 is formed with punching holes at portions corresponding to the blowing nozzles so as not to interfere with air blown from the blowing nozzles 31 provided above the conveyor. The openings of the blowing nozzles 31 and the top plate 4 are arranged substantially flush with each other. The end of the top plate 4 on the side-surface side of the device is bent downward perpendicularly and forms a side wall 41 substantially perpendicular to the upper surface of the conveyor 1 while the tip end thereof has almost no gap with the upper surface of the conveyor 4. That is, in the device, a tunnel is formed by the top plate 4 and the conveyor 1 serving as the floor surface of the tunnel is moved in the arrow direction. Here, the height of the screen 2 is set slightly lower than the top plate 4.

(10) In the whole section of the conveyor 1, walls 5 are fixed to the base of the conveyor or the chamber 3 so as to sandwich the screen 2 with a distance substantially equal to or slightly larger than the width b of the screen 2 on the conveyor 1. A space surrounded by the wall 5, screen 2, top plate 4 and the floor surface of the conveyor 1 serve as loosening rooms 21, 22, 23, 24 . . . , and cooked rice is fed into the loosening rooms 21 . . . , respectively, and as the movement of the conveyor 1, the loosening rooms 21 . . . are transferred in the arrow direction.

(11) At a side of the transfer path of the loosening rooms, belt-shaped collecting rooms 26, 27 are separately formed while partitioned by the wall 5. The collecting room 26 is a space surrounded by the wall 5, top plate 4, the side wall 41 of the top plate 4 and the floor of the conveyor 1, whereas the collecting room 27 is a space surrounded by the wall 5, the wall 5 in the adjacent row, the top plate 4 and the floor of the conveyor 1.

(12) The height of the wall 5 is set to have a predetermined gap with the top plate 4 such that cooked rice floating as individual grains is collected from the loosening rooms 22, 23 . . . into the collecting rooms 26, 27 through this gap over the wall 5. By changing the height of the wall 5 to adjust the width of the gap, the loosening degree of the cooked rice to be collected by the collecting rooms can be adjusted. For example, when the rice grains should be loosened well grain by grain, the gap may be set smaller; whereas, when agglomerates of several rice grains are allowed to remain, the gap may be set larger. Further, by changing the height of the wall 5 successively, for example, by lowering the height of the wall 5 in a stepwise manner as proceeding toward downstream of the conveyor 1, cooked rice loosening can be performed efficiently. For example, when the height of the wall 5 in the conveyor 1 upstream side area of the section is set higher to thereby set the gap between the wall 5 and top plate 4 smaller, and the height of the wall 5 in the conveyor 1 downstream side area of the section c is set lower to thereby set the gap larger, cooked rice can be loosened elaborately in the loosening rooms on the upstream side of the conveyor 1, and cooked rice loosened sufficiently in the loosening rooms can be collected efficiently by the collecting rooms 26, 27 on the conveyor 1 downstream side.

(13) Here, the device is not limited to the above embodiment. In the above description, the loosening rooms 21 are transferred in two rows on the conveyor 1. However, one row or plural rows may also be employed. Also, only the loosening rooms may be transferred by the conveyor, and the collecting rooms may be formed as fixed structures. Although the collecting room 26 is formed as a continuous belt-shaped room, collecting rooms may be formed so as to correspond to the respective loosening rooms 21, and the collecting rooms may be provided with air blowing ports. Although the top plate 4 is formed as a fixed structure, it may be formed as a net-shaped structure and may be transferred together with the movement of the conveyor 1. The wall 5 may be provided on the conveyor 1 so as to be transferred together with the conveyor. The point is that the structure includes a loosening room, blowing ports for blowing high-speed air toward cooked rice in the loosening room, and a collecting room for collecting cooked rice scattered and floated by the air. In the above embodiment, there is shown the continuous type loosening device in which the loosening rooms 21 are movable. However, there may be employed a batch type device in which the loosening room is not movable.

(14) Next, referring to FIG. 4, there will be described a cooked rice loosening method using the loosening device shown in FIGS. 1 to 3. Outside the left ends of FIGS. 1 and 3, there is provided a rice cooking device (not shown) and cooked rice is fed into the loosening room (21 in the drawings) placed on the left end of the conveyor 1, that is, placed at a location not covered by the top plate 4. This feeding may be performed automatically by a machine, or may be performed by an operator such that a substantially equal amount of rice is fed into each loosening room. The cooked rice fed on the conveyor left end enters below the top plate 4 (section d) as the conveyor is transferred in the right direction of the drawings (in the arrow direction), and further enters below the blowing nozzles 31 (section c) for blowing high-speed air.

(15) FIG. 4 shows the blowing nozzles 31 and the state of the cooked rice existing below in the section c. The upper part of FIG. 4 is a conceptual section view of the loosening rooms 23, 24 . . . when the main parts of the loosening device are viewed from a direction (device side direction) parallel to the advancing direction of the loosening rooms, whereas the lower part is a conceptual section view of the loosening rooms 23, 24 . . . when they are cut in a direction perpendicular to the advancing direction thereof, thereby showing a state where, with transfer of the conveyor 1, the cooked rice in the loosening rooms reduces and is collected by the collecting rooms. Firstly, the cooked rice which is fed from the left side of FIG. 4 and reaches the position of the loosening room 23 is blown off into individual grains by high-speed air blown down vertically from the blowing nozzles 31, and cooked rice as the individual grains is caused to float around. The floating cooked rice moves over the wall 5 partitioning the loosening room 23 and collecting rooms 26, 27 from each other through the gap between the wall 5 and the top plate 4 and is collected into the collecting rooms 26, 27. In this case, the screens 2 partitioning the loosening rooms from each other keep the cooked rice within the loosening room 23, which is going out due to the high-speed air blown thereto without being collected by the collecting rooms 26, 27, thereby preventing it from escaping into another loosening room in the conveyor advancing direction.

(16) According to the present invention, since cooked rice is loosened using air, the stickiness of the cooked rice surface is reduced by the air and thus rice grains are hard to bind with each other again, that is, this action can also provide a high loosening effect.

(17) Next, in FIG. 4, as the loosening rooms advance in the right direction (arrow direction) in FIG. 4 through transfer of the conveyor 1, cooked rice in the loosening rooms reduces gradually (reduces in the order of 23, 24 . . . ), whereas cooked rice as individual grains is collected gradually into the collecting rooms. In this process, since the amount of cooked rice in the loosening rooms reduces gradually (23>24> . . . ), high-speed air is efficiently blown to agglomerated-state cooked rice in the loosening rooms. Also, in this embodiment, since the collecting rooms 26, 27 are also transferred by the conveyor 1 similarly to the loosening rooms 21, 22, . . . , as they are transferred in the right direction of FIG. 4, the amount of loosened cooked rice in the collecting rooms increases.

(18) When the loosening rooms has passed through the section c where high-speed air is blown on to the cooked rice and reaches the conveyor right end, the loosened cooked rice collected in the collecting rooms falls down from the conveyor 1 and is then sent to a next process such as a drying process. Also, although cooked rice remaining in the loosening rooms can be returned to the left end of the conveyor 1 again, when the loosened degree is quite well, or when the following process includes a sifting process or the like, it can also be sent to the next process together with the cooked rice in the collecting rooms.

EXAMPLE

(19) There will be described the results of an example in which cooked rice was actually fed into the device shown in FIGS. 1 to 3.

(20) The area of each of the loosening rooms 21, 22, 23 . . . (room surrounded by the wall 5, screen 2, top plate 4 and the floor of the conveyor 1) was set as 450 mm (width b)500 mm, the height of the wall 5 was set as 65 mm, and the height from the surface of the conveyor 1 to the top plate 4 was set as 70 mm. The top plate 4 is formed with punching open-holes at positions corresponding to the blowing nozzles 31. The blowing nozzles (air blowing ports) 31 were formed in a section of 1500 mm above the transfer path of the loosening room 21 (section c), and 280 nozzles 31 were formed in this section c. The open-portion of each nozzle 31 and the surface of the top plate 4 were formed flush with each other.

(21) 3200 g of cooked rice containing about 60% of water was fed substantially evenly into the loosening room 21 on the left end of FIG. 3, and the conveyor 1 was transferred and high-speed air was blown out of the blowing nozzles 31 for loosening the cooked rice in the loosening room. The speed of the conveyor 1 was set to pass through the high-speed air blown section c in 30 seconds, and air of about 60 C. was blown from the blowing nozzles 31 at the nozzle outlet speed of 100 m/s. As a result, after passage of the section c, most of the cooked rice was moved to the collecting room. The rice grains in the collecting room and a small amount of rice remaining in the loosening room, which has almost no agglomerated-state rice, were both found sufficiently loosened into individual grains.

DESCRIPTION OF REFERENCE NUMERALS

(22) 1: conveyor 2: screen 4: top plate (cover) 5: wall 21, 22, 23, 24: loosening room 26, 27: collecting room 31: blowing nozzle (air blowing port)