Development and performance evaluation of smart drying cum storage bin for paddy
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Date
2022-10
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G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar
Abstract
Agriculture meets the food and nutritional requirements of 1.39 billion Indians, and the agriculture & allied sectors share 20.2% of the country’s GDP. India has a major production of food grains and ranks second globally. In comparison with other crops, rice is the most cultivated grain worldwide. As the second-largest producer of rice after China, over 50% of India's population relies on it for food, making it the nation's most consumed grain, accounting for about 20% of global production. India is also one of the world's largest consumers of rice. But from climatic changes point of view, it is an intricate task to store and preserve the agricultural produce without proper facilities as it plays a significant role in maintaining agricultural production activities. Specifically, paddy is harvested in the months of September to October in North and North-Western India, which coincides with the rainy season in some areas, and in light of technical effectiveness, it becomes difficult to store paddy after harvesting and results in the highest loss compared to the other grains. Therefore, an effort was made to create a smart drying cum storage bin for paddy that used a central perforated duct to supply heated air to the grain bulk. It had an automatic cut-off system that made it easier because it displays the moisture content of the grain at any given time, eliminating the need for frequent moisture checks. The airflow rate and temperature of the heater was fixed at 27 m3/h and 45⁰C and thin-layer drying was observed for a depth of 20 cm with two basins having capacity of 18 kg each. The air passes horizontally through the grain bulk taking up the moisture and moves towards the perforated wall of the bin and proceeds towards the exhaust. Drying experiments were conducted to observe the drying characteristics of paddy and thereby evaluate the performance of the smart dryer. During drying, load cell efficiency was obtained as 92.2%. The temperatures and humidity recorded at the top and bottom layer of the paddy were similar. Automatic cut-off system efficiently worked during desorption and adsorption process. Drying of paddy from 19% to 13% moisture content (wb) occurred in falling rate period and it took 1.6 hours. Energy lost during initial heating of ambient air was obtained as 0.9% and 1.1% energy was lost during moisture removal from paddy. Overall, 1.06% energy loss was determined during complete drying process and it was compensated by energy used in heating paddy, basin air, and inner basin wall. The drying efficiency was 75.4% and energy efficiency was found to be 98.9% with 0.29 as heat utilization factor and 0.71 as coefficient of performance.