DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF TROLLEY-CUM-BATCH DRYER FOR PADDY

The tractor trolley available with the farmer was converted into a batch dryer by making suitable modifications. The trolley was modified in such a way that it can hold one tonne of paddy per batch. A set of three heaters (8 kW each) was provided to heat the air for drying and a controllable system was provided to control the air temperature. The performance of the dryer was evaluated by drying paddy and found that the system was capable of drying one tonne of paddy in 100 minutes consuming 56 kW-hr of energy. The operating cost for moisture reduction of one tonne of paddy per batch by 5 per cent i.e. 18 to 13% (w.b.) was approximately Rs. 250. Among the nine drying models fitted to the experimental data the Verma model was found to be the best to represent the drying behaviour of paddy in the trolley-cum-batch dryer.