Low temp burners?

[poorboy]

Have a look at the Air-o-matic sold in saskatoon. It is furnace style heat exchanger that puts the exhaust back to the atmosphere and has a thermostat on it. Runs on nat gas or propane.

I have used it quite a bit and really like it. Buy a big model and you will be able to dry in any condition. A couple of years ago I dryed canola at -20C and it worked well.

You can adjust the thermostat so that not as much heat is needed during the day when humidity is lower and increase the temp during the night. Average dry occurs in most bins in about 4 or 5 days, but this is severly overdry grain in the bottom and tough grain on top. If you run another 5 days you have the whole bin severly overdry and then you just mix it with a bin of tough grain.

The air-o-matic is sold by air-o-don in the green book and is expensive, but a very worthwhile addition to any farm, especially so as we are moving into the colder months.

[saskcanfarmer]

Has anyone used a forced air unit? We just rented one today. 350,000 BTU. Runs on diesel. Gonna give it a try on a good drying hopper bin we have. 19' 5000b bin. We have filled it half full. 3.5hp fan. Anyone has any experience with them? Temperature was 52C going into the fan.

[poorboy]

Forced air unit should work fine. Make sure you have enough air flow with your fan as you want to be able to get the moist air out of the roof. If the fan is too small the air will start to condensate and ice up on the roof when the temps are below freezing.

Too hot an incoming air may burn the grain kernels. I personally would not go above 100degF as we have had many days is Aug and Sept where the grain gets that hot and there is no damage. Prolonged blowing on grain in the 50degC range I have no first hand experience with, but doubt it would help much.

The idea of adding heat is to cut the humidity down. For every 20degF you add, the humidity gets cut in half. So if the air is 30degF and 100% hum, you add some heat and make the incoming air 50degF it will be 50% humidity and if you go to 70degF air it will be 25% humidity and 90degF air will be 12.5% hummidity. The equilibrium for canola is something like 2.5% for air that is 90degF and 25% hummidity. All that will happen by adding any more heat is that you will severly overdry the bottom layer of grain in the bin. It will not speed the drying up much.

If you have a thermostat on your heater, you could try turning it down some. If you have a bigger fan you could try it, as more airflow would make the incoming air cooler. Or else you could see if the rental place has a 200 or 250,000 btu heater.

[ColevilleH2S]

[ColevilleH2S]

Oops that should read 45°F/27°C not º. I got my DOS and Windows codes mixed up.

[ColevilleH2S]

°°°°°°°DUH. I'll give up now.

[Fransisco]

Interesting idea.

[frustrated1]

Coleville, you're a genius. Neighbours always thought I should go on that show junkyard wars. I want you on my team.

[ColevilleH2S]

I miss that show.

---------

With all of the drying going on in Western Canada and the US Corn belt I wonder if there will be any Propane left over for home heating this winter.

[fjlip]

US farmers gas situation...

http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=129304&mid=913597#M913597