The research of infra-red way of grain drying

Key condition of grain safety is high-quality dry-ing with the application of the latest achievements of scientific and technical progress. Infra-red drying is characterized by high efficiency and eco-friendliness; however, the modes have been poorly studied and require empirical study. In the study as a source of radiation 250 watts infra-red reflector lamp was used; the grade wheat Altai-70 was pro-cessed. In the first experiment, it was found out that by increasing the thickness of wheat layer by 2 times the processing time increased by 3 times by slow evaporation of the water from the grain sur-face by natural convection. Electricity consumption was increased by 3 times. The second experiment showed that the application of permanent artificial ventilation during drying change of height of subweight of the irradiator did not reduce the pro-cessing time. At the layer thickness of 0.012 meter the drying time was 75 minutes at the height of subweight 0.2 and 0.5 meters. Electricity consump-tion increased due to the fan power of 0.03 kW. Preliminary experiments have shown that in order to improve the efficiency of grain drying from 23 % to 13 % the humidity it is necessary to apply addi-tional ventilation fan with a pulse mode switching: 4 minutes - a pause, 1 minute - work. As a result, suitable regimes of drying wheat with the height of suspension feed of 0.1 meters above its surface and pulsed ventilation layer thickness of 0.02 me-ters were determined. The time of drying was 105 minutes. At the same time the electricity consump-tion of processing was 1208.9 kWh/t, the cost of processing of one ton of wheat was 1765 rubles.