Design and Evaluation of Test Platform for Study on Vacuum Drying Kinetics

The test platform was designed, constructed and evaluated for experimental study of vacuum drying kinetics of paddy rice, a heat sensitive bio-material.When it comes to low burst-rate and high germination-rate, the vacuum drying outperforms the conventional hot air drying.The lab-built test platform comprised the units of pumping, heating with thermostat control, is-situ weighing of mass, real-time data acquisition/processing, various electronics sensing/control and a self-developed control program package based on Lab VIEW and MATLAB software.The test results included:a relative pressure range of-90~0.0 k Pa, a mass range of ≤ 200 g with a precision of±0.01 g and a temperature range of 23℃ to 110℃ with an accuracy of ±1℃.We suggest that the newly-developed test platform may be of some basis and technological interest in study on vacuum drying kinetics of crop seeds, including but not limited to paddy rice, wheat, soy bean and cotton.