Sorption equilibrium moisture and isosteric heat of cold plasma treated milled rice

To promote industrial adoption of cold plasma as a sustainable and safe processing technology for rice, data on equilibrium moisture content (EMC) for cold plasma treated milled rice of five Chinese varieties were collected by a gravimetric method at 11–96% equilibrium relative humidity (ERH) and a temperature range of 15–35 °C. Nine models were fitted well to the sorption data, with the modified Guggenheim–Anderson–deBoer equation (3-MGAB), modified Henderson equation (MHE), and a polynomial equation being the best fits. At a constant ERH, the EMC was negatively correlated with temperature, whereas there was a strong effect of temperature on the sorption isotherms of the milled rice. Initially, the isosteric heats of sorption for the cold plasma treated rice decreased rapidly with increasing sample moisture content (MC); however, when MC was higher than 15% of the wet basis (w.b.), further increases in MC caused a slight decrease in heat sorption values. The heat of vaporization of the milled rice approached the latent heat of pure water at a moisture content of ~17.5% w.b., which was ~2500 kJ/kg. The isosteric heat of sorption values of the milled rice predicted by the modified Chung-Pfost equation (MCPE) and MHE models negatively correlated with temperature. At 70% ERH, the safe-storage MC of the cold plasma treated rice were ≤14.5% w.b. at 25 °C. In comparison to the untreated milled rice, the cold plasma treated rice with 120 W for 20 s and 60 s significantly decreased the water contact angle and increased kernel broken index, without significantly changing the appearance quality of milled rice. The cold plasma treated rice with 120 W-20 s had insignificantly higher EMC than that of 120 W-60 s at the studied temperature range. This study demonstrates that helium cold plasma treatment insignificantly changed hygroscopic property of milled rice whilst maintaining the appearance quality.