Abstract
Early season maize is harvested with high moisture content that makes it impossible to store. The sale of early season maize in green form is uneconomical to the farmer. Experience had shown that farmers could hardly make the cost of production from their sales. Also, grain losses are high when maize is harvested green. To minimize grain losses and thereby increase value and the profit margin of the farmer, a grain dryer is necessary for wet grains. Therefore, this paper presents the design and development of a batch in-bin maize grain dryer. Some properties of maize such as moisture content and bulk density were determined to get information required for design of the dryer. The dimension of drying chamber, amount of moisture to be removed in a batch, quantity of air required to effect drying, volume of air required to effect drying, blower capacity, quantity of heat required to effect drying and actual heat used to effect drying were all designed for. A maize dryer was developed with a batch size of100 kg of threshed wet maize. The dryer can be used in laboratory for experimental purpose as well as on the farm for commercial purposes. The dryer can be used to measure drying rates of maize at different initial moisture contents, drying air temperatures, drying air velocities and grain beds. The effects of different drying temperature, air velocity, loading and agitating speed on the quality of dried maize can be investigated with the dryer.
Highlights
Maize is an all-important crop which provides an avenue for making various types of foods
Drying reduces the amount of water contained in the crop after harvest to an acceptable level for marketing, storage or processing [3]. Both grain temperature and moisture content are critical in maintaining quality
The moisture content of the maize was determined to know the amount of moisture to be removed from the freshly harvested maize
Summary
Maize is an all-important crop which provides an avenue for making various types of foods. If the crop is left on the field to dry, it will continue to deteriorate because of the slow rate of drying They are harvested with the high moisture content and sold cheaply to be cooked or roasted for consumption. Drying reduces the amount of water contained in the crop after harvest to an acceptable level for marketing, storage or processing [3] Both grain temperature and moisture content are critical in maintaining quality. The cooking of the grains and stress cracking due to the development of high internal grains’ temperatures and pressures can be avoided if the condition of the inlet air introduced into the dryer systems is carefully selected This will ensure the good quality of out-loaded grain bulk. The objective of this study is to design and develop a batch in-bin maize grain dryer for freshly harvested maize for on farm usage with a view to reducing the postharvest losses faced by farmers thereby increasing their income
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