CROSS-FLOW PADDY DRYER APPLICATION USING INFRARED GAS BURNER

Paddy is an economic crop that produces income for Thailand. After the harvest, the paddy would contain high moisture content (MC). Therefore, drying of the paddy is critical to prevent insect infestation and quality deterioration of the paddy. The objective of this paper was to construct a cross-flow paddy dryer application using an infrared gas burner and monitor the moisture that is reduced, and the energy consumption is included. The dryer installed an input temperature and humidity sensor (DHT22) in the air inlet and sensor (EE31) in hot air outlet to read and record data values. Arduino microcontroller was used as the main processor that receives input from a DHT22, EE31 sensor. After that, the processor would calculate the humidity ratio of air and indicate the MC level of the paddy that is reduced. The drying condition used in this study were: paddy initial MC range 20-21% wet basis (wb), a feed rate of 60 kg/h (speed of rotary valve 2 rev/min), the average hot-air temperature of 130 °C, average drying air velocities of 2 m/s, and the average eccentric speed of lift 110 rev/min. The results showed that the system could process and display MC of the paddy that was reduced from the initial MC to the final MC, and alerted the dryer to the user. The dryer was applied to the infrared gas burner, the dryer consumed fairly low energy: 5.85 MJ/kg water evaporated.