Radiator Warms Air For In-Bin Grain Drying

Radiator Warms Air For In-Bin Grain Drying GRAIN HANDLING Accessories 25-6-3 Stan Goodman, Piney, Manitoba, needed a quicker way to dry the Reed Canary Grass seed he grows on contract for a couple of seed companies. Goodman prefers drying seed with aeration fans and natural air and he has two grain bins with perforated floors set up for this purpose. "It took up to about 3 weeks to dry a higher-moisture batch of seed with just aeration," he notes, so he was usually forced to use a propane fired grain dryer. Hoping to cut his drying costs, Goodman looked at some of the commercially available low-temperature drying systems. "Propane heaters placed directly in front of aeration fans can remove humidity from the air and cut drying time without putting a lot of heat into the air," he says. But he would still have a propane bill to pay. He has a sawmill and plenty of scrap wood, though, so he decided to create his own low-temperature drying setup by putting a wood furnace in front of the intake fan. "Pulling hot air from a jacket around the furnace worked well, but even though the wood burner was vented away from the aeration fan, the seed still had a smoky smell after it was dry," he says. When his son brought a wood-fired boiler to Goodman's shop for some minor repairs, he was inspired to try again. This time, he set the hot water furnace away from the bin and piped the hot water from it to a radiator he mounted in front of the aeration fan. "It worked great," Goodman says. "With the intake air warmed by the hot water running through the radiator, I was able to dry a batch of seed in just three days." He set up two radiators, one for each of his drying bins. "I can use one boiler for both radiators," he says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Stan Goodman, Box 64, Piney, Manitoba R0A 1K0 Canada (ph 204 423-2297; E-mail: srgoodman@mb.sympatico.ca).

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