Browsing by Author "Mussalo, Ville"

The aim of this study was to design a small scale grain drying facility and measure the effectiveness of grain drying. The small scale dryer was built by Antti-Teollisuus, a Finnish grain dryer manufacturer, near their research, development and production plant. Measurements were carried out in the autumn of 2008. The dryer could be used as a continuous flow dryer or as a batch dryer. Dryer was instrumented with suitable sensors to measure air temperature, relative humidity of air and air velocity. This information was then used to solve the efficiency of drying. Measurements went reasonably well, although moisture content from grain was quite high when compared to results given by moisture meter that grinds grain and gives the results straight away. Dryer performance was approx. 50-75 kW, which is quite near to the results found in earlier studies on the same subject. Energy consumption 3-6 MJ/kg water removed from grain was very near the results in previous studies of grain drying whether the dryer was large scale or small scale. In general, a small scale dryer can be used to study the phenomenon in grain drying quite well. For future studies are left for example inspecting how the shape or distance between air ducts inside the drying cells can be altered or what effect does increasing or decreasing drying air temperature or air velocity have on drying. For improved efficiency the grain dryer should be insulated, this could also prevent some air leaks and ensure that the data measured by the sensors is even more accurate.