Corn, rice mills designed by government get awards

FARM machines developed by the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and last year for having real- world applications, especially for areas where small landholdings ares predominant.

“The efficiency and availability of milling machines for rice and corn in every locality is vital to achieve food self- sufficiency and security in the Philippines,” said Michael Gragasin, the award- winning researcher of PhilMech.

His invention, the Impeller Compact Rice Mill, won first Category during the 2017 Regional Invention Contest and Exhibits held at the Central - year. Meanwhile, the Rolling Mobile Corn Mill, one of his initiatives at PhilMech, won First Best Research Paper in Resource Research and Development Consortium’s Fiesta’s 28th Regional Symposium on R& D ( research and development), held in September 2017.

“This technology is intended for villages without existing rice mill, because we do not have enough rice mills especially in barrios, so we developed this innovative impeller rice mill to single- phase electric line from three phase,” Gragasin said, referring to the rice mill.

The Impeller Compact Rice Mill has a capacity of 250 to 300 kilograms per hour for both white and brown rice. It can mill brown rice to 10- to 15-percent moisture content, and has a milling recovery of 72 to 78 percent for brown rice, and 62 to 65 percent for white rice. It has a milling cost of 87 centavos per kilo.

For the corn mill, power comes from a 4DR automotive engine that has a displacement of 3.0 liters and power rating of 60 hp. The average fuel consumption is 3.83 liters per hour of operation.

It has an input capacity of 940 to 1,100 kg per hour, recovery of 66 to 71 percent, and degermination efficiency of 82 to 88 percent. It also has a milling cost of 88 centavos per kg. The corn mill is recommended for processing corn grains for degermed corn, corn grits for human consumption, and

For this year, the Impeller Compact Rice Mill is Central Research Category in the 2018 Meanwhile, the Rolling Mobile Corn Mill will compete in a symposium that will be hosted by the Department of Science and Technology.