Wheat Energy Dries Itself

We all know that it takes energy to dry grain and grain does contain energy. This energy is given up when the grain cools, but what if all the energy in the grain was used, as it cools for drying?

To answer this question we will use one cubic meter of wheat that will be cooled with aeration from 30⁰ to 5⁰ C. It has a MC of 15%. If all the energy in cooling could be used to dry the wheat, what could we get the MC down to – 14%? 13%? Let’s do the math and find out.

We know that it takes energy to evaporate water, the latent heat of evaporation; it is 2257 kJ/kg. Let’s assume that all the energy in the wheat, in going from 30⁰ C to 5⁰ C. will be used in evaporating water from the wheat. How much water (in %MC) can be removed?

1 bu = 1.2446 cubic feet       35.31 ft3 = 1 cubic meter     2.204 lbs/kg

One cubic meter of wheat has a weight of : 35.31 ft3/1.2446 = 28.57 bu.    x 60 lb/bu. = 1714 lbs, 777 kg

One percent moisture, 1% MC would then be 7.77 kg.   If wheat was 15% MC, then 116 kg would be water. (Remember we are dealing with one cubic meter or 28.57 bushels)

The wheat in going from 30⁰ C to 5⁰ C has how much energy to give. What is the specific heat? It can vary, and I found that it increases as the MC increases but for a MC of 15% it is about 2 kJ/kgC

The wheat has got energy:

2 x 777 kg x 25 C = 38,850 kJ and divide by how much energy is needed to evaporate

38850 /2257  = 17.2 kg of water can be evaporated with the energy from the wheat.

But 1% MC is 7.77 kg ,   17.2 kg/7.77 = 2.21% reduction in MC. If the wheat was 15% and all the energy went into evaporating water in going from 30 to 5⁰ C, then the MC would be reduced by 2.2% and be dried from 15% MC to 12.8%.

Our data showed just about the same thing. Cooling the grain with aeration, we found that reducing the temperature by 15 C would remove 1% moisture. In some trials with a high MC, we found this to be: 10C/%. In this case, for wheat, the amount of cooling to decrease the MC by one is: 11⁰/%MC.  This demonstrates that aeration (at least with our experimental trials) is efficient in using the energy of the grain. I thought we might be losing more of the energy to conduction, but it appears that almost all the energy in the grain goes into drying. I thought that by increasing the contact time, (decreasing CFM) that we could get more efficient, but it appears that we are already doing a pretty good job in using almost all the energy in the grain for drying. It also tells me that we can’t expect much more than 2% decrease in MC in going from 30⁰C to 5⁰C. If we must lower the MC by more than two percent, we might have to use supplemental heat, or carefully allow the outside air to warm the grain (Hopefully without adding water) and then cooling it to remove more water.

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