OUR LARGEST GRAIN DRYER YET

KENNY GRAINTEK

Member
Carrying on from our smallest grain dryer to our largest so far is our 200 tonne model fully insulted and cladded and weather roof ( all our dryers are done this way)with virtually no heat loss as opposed to uninsulated
dryers, the hot air plenum alone has a surface area of 311 square meters just imagine the heat loss. Along with our fans are all inverter controlled to maximise efficiency. It has two intake pits each holding
330 tonnes and drying 45 artic trailers of malting Barley ranging from 21-17 % down to 12.5% per day without the need of a nightshift and a hot air temperature of 50 to 55 deg C we keep the drying speed constant
and increase the heat by a couple of degrees instead of slowing dryer down for wetter grain. the pictures you see are us building up dryer, all suited and booted and our fully automatic 70 motor control centre
tailored to fit inside portacabin.

CBF3.jpgcarnegiealt.jpgCBF2.jpg
 

KENNY GRAINTEK

Member
sound a good design. Often wondered why the heat couldn’t be recycled via a heat exchange. Having dried grain at minus twenty and paid the propane bill I can see the merits of being insulated.
Yes it like sticking a radiator in your garden you heat the air and stick a box over it the heat stays in . We got Rockwool to do a heat loss calculation based on our 30 TPH dryer if uninsulated it could loose up
to 20,000kw of heat energy per harvest . this equates to about 2000 litres of fuel.
 

KENNY GRAINTEK

Member
Excellent. Does it cool down the grain and recycle the recovered heat? We spend fuel heating it up, then electricity cooling it down and throw away the heat. Waste.
This is a continuous flow dryer using the last section for cooling before entering into store and when stopping at night we have 20min static cool time and because the dryer is totally insulated there is no condensation in the centre column
also retaining residual heat so very quick to warm up in morning about 10 mins and ready to go store. We are working on something to make it even more efficient than it already is but the enormous fuel saving along with our fan inverters
is a great starter for ten
 

puma power

Member
Mixed Farmer
Sorry what height and roof pitch? I'm being nosey as we are about to put a wet tip bay next to our drying floors that could take a tipped artic!
 

KENNY GRAINTEK

Member
Are you using heat pumps to recover heat from the grain as it is cooled, to heat the grain as it is dried?
Not at the moment but we are working on a design and getting costings to see if it is practical in terms of cost of unit and electricity to run the unit. But insulating the dryer is a great starter for 10 and very easy to do on our dryers.
Back at the start when we started making grain dryers I got rockwool to do a calculation on heat loss on the burner plenum alone based on our average dryer a 30 tph model uninsulated could loose up to 20,000 Kw of heat energy per harvest
equating to around 2,000 litres of fuel and that's on a surface area of 58 square metres ,like I mentioned for the dryer in the picture has surface area of 311 square just over 5 times the size!! and if you completely insulate the dryer like we do as standard
you will have even more heat saving. In my next thread I will be posting my on tests using our thermal imagining camera. Thankyou for your question
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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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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