Abstract
When I visited Harbin city, China, in 1984, I investigated corn drying facility for seeds. A non-circulation reversible air flow type dryer was used. Since there are some problems in drying rate, drying method and so on, I decided to carry out a technical check, after which the following technical faults were found out:
1) The average drying rate is very low, 0.25%/h. This was caused by low capacity of the heating furnace, low ratio of air flow to grain and significant heat loss.
2) Unshelled corn was dried in this facility. The unshelled corn is very difficult to dry, especially with this low drying rate.
To improve the drying performance, two stages drying method can be adopted, in which the drying is performed before and after shelling. In this way, the drying rate of about 2%/h could be obtained by using the newly made dryer.
