An Experimental Study on Natural Convection Biomass Dryer with Different Sensible Heat Storage Materials

Abstract

The state Odisha of India is mainly an agro based state and maximum percentage of population of the state depends on cultivation. Rice is the main cultivation crop here. Post harvesting losses are more due to lack of proper knowledge of farmers. Farmers used to dry paddy with open solar drying technique before storing. The main problem in this technique is that there is no control in the amount of heat transferred to the items which gradually leads to cracking of grains. One of the best possible solution is to dry the grain by using biomass grain dryer. In the present research work, an efficient and effective biomass burner with fins is designed and fabricated at SOA University in city of Bhubaneswar, Odisha to dry the paddy by using sensible heat storage materials. Two different sensible heat storage materials pebble and concrete have been used to dry 10 kg of paddy in a batch wise drying process. The average moisture content of fresh paddy of 29.2% was dried to 14.8% in 240 minutes by using pebbles and by using concrete time taken to reach desire moisture content is in 210 min. The time taken by this process is less than the conventional drying without storage materials. The temperature near the paddy tray was maintained in a range of 50– 58 °C which is a comfortable temperature for paddy drying. The efficiency of the dryer with pebbles and concrete also calculated and better efficiency is observed with concrete as sensible heat storage material.