Round Bale Burner Cuts Drying Cost

Round Bale Burner Cuts Drying Cost BALE HANDLING Bale Handling 31B Nick Ries Hastings Minn cut his corn drying natural gas bill by more than half last year with the help of a home-built corn stalk bale burner that pre-heats air for his crop dryer
    The furnace is buried in an earth berm near his bins and is built out of an old asphalt boiler that measures 30 ft long by 7 ft in diameter A door was cut into one end big enough to slide in large round bales of corn stalk residue Ries feeds bales into the furnace with a front-end loader
    Channel iron sq tubing and plate steel were used to form a jacket around the outside of the firebox capturing heat that s pulled off by a piece of steel culvert pipe A length of heavy flexible plastic tubing runs to the base of the wet grain holding bin When Ries fires up a bale and then turns on the dryer fan air is pulled through a wooden ductwork on the other side of the bin and into the dryer
     The burner delivers 95 degree heated air to the dryer It lowers the humidity which results in fabulous drying says Ries We burned two bales per day over a 45-day period and dried about 200 000 bu of corn It worked better than I had hoped There are only a couple of pails full of ash left after burning because it burns so hot
     It really saves on our propane bill I figured our fuel bill would have been around $35 000 instead of about $15 000
    He says each corn stalk bale burns one to two days depending on outside temperatures
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Nick Ries 17205 230 St Hastings Minn 55033 ph 651 226-8314

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