Design, Fabrication and Performance Study of a Small-scale Grain Seed Dryer

Abstract

Drying of seeds at the farmer level in Bangladesh is normally carried out by the traditional sun drying method, this method is practiced until today for grain because of the advantages of simplicity and low-cost, but it results in inferior quality of seed due to longer drying time. This work concerns the development of a small-scale grain seed dryer for farmers. The size of the dryer was 800 mm height and 800 mm wide. A rotary drum was used inside the drying chamber to keep the seeds drying operation. The drum size was 700 mm long and 410 mm diameter. A 0.5 hp motor was used to rotate the drum for auto stirring the grain seed and uniformly drying. Machine parameters for the evaluation included the seed feed rate and drying temperatures. In this experiment, sample was taken 2, 4 and 6 kg paddy seeds and dried in 35, 40 and 45°C temperature, respectively. The paddy was dried for a period of 6 h. The minimum moisture content of paddy was found to be 9.8% (wb) at 45°C. The maximum average germination of dried paddy seed was found 86% from the germination test of the dried paddy seed. The construction cost of the dryer was US$ 495.5 and the drying cost was US$ 1.08 per hour.