grain drying

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
Do you not think that would work if the boiler can supply the heat requirements? We hopefully have someone identified to cut harvest our willow in whole rods soon. We are planning to stack them and season them naturally until the autumn. We might try some in a solar kiln as you mentioned previously if we can get our hands on a 2nd hand polytunnel coming at handy money and the rest outside with the prevailing wind blowing straight into the stack.

The plan would then be to chip as and when required and blow onto a small drying floor to get the moisture down to a consistent level sub 20% and hopefully ready to burn in the boiler we hope to install. Heat would be used for staff room, office, dwelling and small drying floor.

Only initial stage of planning but thats a rough idea of what we're hoping to do. Looked at a similar system last week and hoping to go to look at another tomorrow. The farmers seem happy enough with it. Hopefully draw up more detailed plans with installer as soon as possible.

Dry before you chip is not a problem as your probably only looking at reducing from 25% down to 20% which is within the capability of grain driers but green chip at 50% down to 20% is a whole different ball game which is why I suggested the Lenz system.
 

RobLM

Member
Location
Angus, Scotland
I wanted to heat the air going into our Opico dryer using our biomass, my idea was to fit a large heat exchanger in front of the intake on the side (RAB 5000) fitted with electric valves to switch off heat when the gas went off to allow it to cool. However our installer said I wouldn't gain very much due to the high air flow to justify the cost of the system. He said on floor was best with biomass.
Floor systems are perfect for biomass systems in my opinion. Easy enough to fit to continuous flow dryers of Opico type dryers as well. A little more thought required but not rocket science. Have you considered using OSR or wheat straw as a fuel for you boiler? Have a look at Ekopal boilers supplied by Earthfire Energy nationwide. Call me on 07796262593 if you wish to discuss further. Robin
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
Floor systems are perfect for biomass systems in my opinion. Easy enough to fit to continuous flow dryers of Opico type dryers as well. A little more thought required but not rocket science. Have you considered using OSR or wheat straw as a fuel for you boiler? Have a look at Ekopal boilers supplied by Earthfire Energy nationwide. Call me on 07796262593 if you wish to discuss further. Robin

Obviously not an end user suffering from contamination from floor systems. Thankfully my chip is clean as it never touches the floor.
 

MGE90D

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
The mobile drier requires a large boiler to provide enough renewable heat to make it worth while. Floor driers require lower heat input and hence smaller boilers. The trade off though is that with a floor drier you are likely to end up hiring a mobile drier to finish the job if its coming in over 16/17%
 
The mobile drier requires a large boiler to provide enough renewable heat to make it worth while. Floor driers require lower heat input and hence smaller boilers. The trade off though is that with a floor drier you are likely to end up hiring a mobile drier to finish the job if its coming in over 16/17%

Define large / small boilers if you would!?
 

MGE90D

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
It really depends on the drier. A 12t GT would be at the lower end of air throughput and a 50t Mecmar. But generally speaking I would say anything up to 300kW is unlikely to be cost effective with a mobile drier. The aim of the game is to burn a high proportion of biomass compared to diesel/LPG. There is a trade off, drying at lower temperatures will reduce the amount of oil/gas used in comparison to biomass but will extend drying times. To put it into context I work for McArthur Agriculture and we specialize in batch driers. It is in my interests to identify commercially viable operations as we can provide heat exchangers tailor made to different driers (mobile or static or floor). However, there is a very slim set of parameters where it works. In general the biomass for drying grain concept (in any type of drier) is nowhere near as commercially viable as one would be led to believe from the media coverage. And the situations where it does stack up you are dependent on the guaranteed payments. Personally I don't believe anything is guaranteed when it is coming ultimately from the government. I know that all sounds very negative, it is possible to make it work but I keep finding my customers who have been given extremely questionable sales pitches for using the biomass by people who know nothing about drying grain, frankly its getting a bit ridiculous. Im not slating the industry in general, absoulutely not, as there are some really good companies doing good honest work, but be cynical. I predict lots of very pee'd off farmers in the future.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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