Patent Application
20240081384
The present invention relates generally to the field of agricultural equipment. More specifically, the invention relates to the field of driers used for drying of various agriculture produce.
Agriculture produce drying mechanism is the process of drying agriculture produces to prevent spoilage during storage. There are various existing techniques in prior art that are used for agriculture produce drying. One such technique of drying involves drying under sunlight over a vast patch of prepared land. This technique involves a labor-intensive process utilizing either manual or semi-mechanized means to spread out and subsequently gather back the agriculture produce to and from the open-air drying areas. This is particularly stressful to the workers especially in adverse weather conditions normally found during drying seasons.
Another common method of drying uses steam driers and or heat pump method wherein steam is generated in boilers by burning wood, husk or any other combustible fuel and the heat of the steam is used to heat the agricultural produce by conduction or convection methods over long period of time to achieve the requisite drying results.
Another known process is a natural open-air drying process, where the produce to be dried is spread out on a vast land and allowed to dry under action of natural elements which has its disadvantages of long drying times and uncertainties in rainy seasons, poor process control etc.
Grain drying process is accomplished to prevent spoilage of agricultural grains during their storage. Grains such as wheat, corn, soybean, rice and other grains as sorghum, sunflower seeds, rapeseed, barley, oats seeds are dried in grain dryers in hundreds of millions of tons. A grain drying equipment uses fuel- or electric-powered source for functioning. Aeration, unheated or natural grain drying, deration, in-storage cooling, heated air grain drying, solar drying, etc. are some of the conventional methods adapted for drying of grains.
The conventionally used driers have a lot of disadvantages like poor process control, inefficient energy transfer methods, environmental issues related to burning of fuels, larger drying times, rigid processes, non-flexible equipment in terms of type of applicable produce etc. and comes with a lot of process rejects due to poor handling abilities.
Therefore, there is a need for an efficient and formidable system for drying agricultural grains, fruits, seeds, vegetables, etc. as per preset optimum drying curves.
The object of the invention is to provide a compact and efficient drying mechanism for drying various agriculture produce at industrial volume scales
The shortcomings of the prior art are overcome, and additional advantages are provided through the provision of the present disclosure. Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present disclosure. Other embodiments and aspects of the disclosure are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the disclosure.
The present disclosure discloses a drying system for grains for drying agricultural produce. The system comprises conveyor belts, having one or more pass and each of the pass is adapted to transit the agricultural produce. The system further comprises heat emitting sources placed above each pass of the conveyor belt, and the heat emitting source is adapted to radiate heat onto the agricultural produce. The heat emitting sources are a series of Infrared heaters (IR heaters), which are strategically placed at uniform height over a flowing bed of grains with controlled thickness to have a preset Produce to Emitter Gap (PEG). The Heat emitting sources are charged in a controlled way to emit a pre-determined intensity of radiation or a pre-determined temperature setting to be imparted on the grains. A PEG gap maintenance means is provided, which is adapted to maintain a predefined gap between the agricultural produce and the heat emitting source. A heat controller is provided to control the one or more heat emitting source by either controlling intensity of the radiation or temperature of the heat emitting source.
These agricultural produces would get heated as it flows below the Heat emitting sources to emulate any drying curve as desired by simply setting the IR heating parameters for the desired energy levels or temperatures. By employing sensors and PLC controls, the entire sequence can be automated. Also, the time vs heat curve can be achieved by arranging the grain flow length and heating cycles to be long enough to match the desired drying curves intended for that particular type of produce to be dried.
The system comprises sensors, such as temperature sensors, moisture sensors, or both. the temperature sensors are adapted to sense at least a temperature of the agricultural produce or the heat controller or combination thereof. The temperature sensors are adapted to generate a temperature data, and the moisture sensors are adapted to sense at least moisture of the agricultural produce or an environment in which is agricultural produce is to be transited or in transit, or combination thereof, and adapted to generate a moisture data. A microprocessor is provided, which is adapted to receive and process at least the temperature data, the moisture data, or combination thereof, along with a predefined set of rules, and to generate a change trigger. The heat controller is adapted to receive and process the change trigger and adapted to control the one or more heat emitting source based on such processing.
The one or more passes of the conveyor belts are divided into more than one heat zones, and each heat zone has at least one or more temperature sensors to generate the temperature data for it, and one or more moisture sensors to generate the moisture data for each heat zone, or combination thereof. The microprocessor is adapted to process at least one of the temperature data for each heat zones, the moisture data of each of the heat zones, or combination thereof. The microprocessor thereafter generates change triggers of each of the heat zones, and the heat controller is adapted to receive and process each of the change triggers and adapted to control the one or more heat emitting source based on such processing.
The system comprises mixing means, adapted to mix the agricultural produce while the agricultural produce is in transit. The mixing means are placed along the length of the one or more pass through which the agricultural produce is adapted to be transited. Further, the mixing means are placed at a predefined distance which is more than the predefined gap between the agricultural produce and the heat emitting source. The system comprises various categories of mixing means, and each category of the mixing rods are placed at different predefined distances. The mixing means are placed at predefined intervals along the pass of the conveyor belt. With a mixing arrangement of grains, it can be ensured that the heating of the grains is more consistent across the various depths of the grain in the grain bed and the desired drying curve is effective enough to achieve an even process on all grains under process.
The system comprises radiation reflectors, functionally coupled to the Heat emitting sources, and to reflect the radiations towards the pass which is adapted to transit the agricultural produce for drying. The radiation reflectors are placed either above the Heat emitting sources, or onto one of sides non-parallel to a surface of the conveyor belt, or combination thereof.
The PEG gap maintenance means comprises a leveler rod, which is placed at a leveler distance from the Heat emitting source which is equivalent to the predefined gap. The PEG gap maintenance means further comprises a hopper placed on a path of inlet of the agricultural produce to a first pass of the system, and is placed at a hop distance from the first pass of the conveyor belt. This is required to provide a height of the agricultural produce bed onto the conveyor belt so as to achieve the predefined gap from the heat emitting source.
An aeration means is provided between passes of the one or more conveyor belts, which is adapted to pass the air around and/or through the agricultural produce when the agricultural produce is in transit.
It is to be understood that the aspects and embodiments of the disclosure described above may be used in any combination with each other. Several of the aspects and embodiments may be combined together to form a further embodiment of the disclosure.
The foregoing summary is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting. In addition to the illustrative aspects, embodiments, and features described above, further aspects, embodiments, and features will become apparent by reference to the drawings and the following detailed description.
The novel features and characteristics of the disclosure are set forth in the description. The disclosure itself, however, as well as a preferred mode of use, further objectives and advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to the following description of an illustrative embodiment when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. One or more embodiments are now described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings wherein like reference numerals represent like elements and in which:
The figures depict embodiments of the disclosure for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following description that alternative embodiments of the assemblies, structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the disclosure described herein.
For the purpose of promoting an understanding of the principles of the invention, reference will now be made to the embodiment illustrated in the figures and specific language will be used to describe them. It will nevertheless be understood that no limitation of the scope of the invention is thereby intended. Such alterations and further modifications in the illustrated system, and such further applications of the principles of the invention as would normally occur to those skilled in the art are to be construed as being within the scope of the present invention.
It will be understood by those skilled in the art that the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory of the invention and are not intended to be restrictive thereof.
The terms “comprises”, “comprising”, or any other variations thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process or method that comprises a list of steps does not include only those steps but may include other steps not expressly listed or inherent to such a process or method. Similarly, one or more sub-systems or elements or structures or components preceded by “comprises . . . a” does not, without more constraints, preclude the existence of other, sub-systems, elements, structures, components, additional sub-systems, additional elements, additional structures or additional components. Appearances of the phrase “in an embodiment”, “in another embodiment” and similar language throughout this specification may, but not necessarily do, all refer to the same embodiment.
Unless otherwise defined, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by those skilled in the art to which this invention belongs. The system, methods, and examples provided herein are only illustrative and not intended to be limiting.
Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying figures.
The system, methods, and examples provided herein are only illustrative and not intended to be limiting.
Cereal grains and legumes are mostly harvested at moisture contents too high for conservative storage. Thus, drying them becomes an essential process before storing them. A large amount of water has to be removed in drying wet grains. Hence, adequate amount of drying air has to be provided to the grains to assure that drying to safe-storage moisture contents is completed before microbial deterioration of the grain initiates. This is the main objective of all sun and mechanical grain drying based systems.
The largest dryers are in plants and are of the continuous type such as mixed-flow dryers and Cross-flow dryers. Continuous flow dryers may result up to 100 metric tons of dried grain per hour. They generally consist of a bin, with heated air flowing horizontally from an internal cylinder through an inner perforated metal sheet, then through an annular grain bed in radial direction, and finally across the outer perforated metal sheet, before being discharged to the atmosphere. The usual drying times depends on how much water must be removed, type of grain, air temperature and the grain depth.
The present disclosure provides a compact and efficient drying mechanism for drying various agriculture produce at industrial volume scales with the intent of application of any preset drying rate curve with direct heat transfer method via radiant energy method using Infrared radiation heating systems. This would provide an efficient and controlled drying of raw, semi-processed and/or processed agricultural produce including paddy, corns, grains, lintels and the like, on a sustainable basis, utilizing the minimum possible area. The direct heat transfer would therefore eliminate the low generation losses of fossil fuels or flammable fuels, transmission losses, equipment losses and inefficient heat transfers to the grains ultimately which normally has breakages and other quality issues.
By virtue of direct heating of the produce by radiant energy, the energy transfer efficiency of above 95% can be achieved. And with a closed loop control system, the heating process can be controlled through the entire heat cycle very accurately to limit the total variation to less than 1 deg. Celsius.
It may be noted that even though a lot of research has been made till date from as early as 1980s onwards on the usefulness, suitability, benefits of IR heating methods over conventional methods for grain drying processes and other food process related applications, all the studies and efforts have so far been limited to small scale batch volumes while an effective industrialization of this technology hasn't been made as is evident in the grain processing industry today, all over the world. This is basically because of the lack of a suitable equipment that could adopt this IR heating technology for a holistic lasting solution.
This invention is therefore is an effort to overcome all such limitations and hurdles to effectively devise a way of utilizing this highly efficient IR heating technology in a way to use it to accurately heat the agriculture produce to a precise predetermined drying cycle with automatic controls and more importantly on a continuous process basis and for large volumes with consistency and sustainability. The system and method are also capable for providing dehydration process for the various fruits, vegetables, seeds and the like and drying any organic & inorganic products, by virtue of its unique versatility and process flexibility.
The present disclosure focuses on a drying system (100) for agricultural produce (5), includes heat emitting sources (3) for heating agricultural produce (5), which are placed over a continuous moving grain bed with uniform thickness and with a consistent Produce to Emitter Gap (PEG), so that the heat imparted are uniform over the agricultural produce (5) at any given passage point.
In one embodiment, the passes (10) of the conveyor belts (9) are divided into multiple heat zones (18), as shown in
The cases provided in
The depth of penetration of the IR radiation, for e.g. the medium wavelength type suitable for grain heating will have a limited depth of penetration typically around 30 mm. In order for the system (100) to be able to handle a sizeable production volume of agricultural produce (5) for drying purpose, using IR radiation with medium wavelength, the system needs to maintain a much thicker agricultural produce bed sizes like 100 mm to 200 mm. In such cases, it is needed that the agricultural produce bed must have a lengthier pass (10) with grain mixing along the way.
The mixing means (4) put to use at varied depths and at multiple locations of the pass (10), ensures a thorough mixing of the agricultural produce (5) for an eventual uniformity in grain temperatures. This mixing is crucial to this set up as it is needed to have the heating of the agricultural produce (5) uniform across agricultural produce (5) being processed for higher volume requirements. As already mentioned, these mixing means (4) can be of varied designs, static or rotating as the need would be. In case of more depth, it could be seen that more heat emitting sources (3) are deployed to have more wattage/sq. m radiant density and more mixing means (4) deployed across various depth of the bed to have a heightened degree of grain mixing for uniform grain heating.
The heat emitting sources (3) are further provided with radiation reflectors (6), which reflects the radiations towards the pass (10). In
The major advantage of the present disclosure is that it is based on a clean energy source when used in electric based heat emitting sources (3) and doesn't need the highly polluting contemporary method of fossil fuel, husk-based burning and steam generation or hot air pump methods. It is understood that a standard 100 T drying currently consumes about 15 T of husk burning while this process can completely avoid this carbon foot print on a sustained basis.
A single rice mill unit with a daily capacity of 100 T which when deploys this IR heat based drier system would effectively eliminate 3500 T of husk burning in one year. This is a green initiative potential invention with a massive scope of carbon reduction globally. The global rice production in 2019 was nearly 500 Million Metric Tonnes.
The embodiments herein and the various features and advantageous details thereof are explained with reference to the non-limiting embodiments in the description. Descriptions of well-known components and processing techniques are omitted so as to not unnecessarily obscure the embodiments herein. The examples used herein are intended merely to facilitate an understanding of ways in which the embodiments herein may be practiced and to further enable those of skill in the art to practice the embodiments herein. Accordingly, the examples should not be construed as limiting the scope of the embodiments herein.
The foregoing description of the specific embodiments will so fully reveal the general nature of the embodiments herein that others can, by applying current knowledge, readily modify and/or adapt for various applications such specific embodiments without departing from the generic concept, and, therefore, such adaptations and modifications should and are intended to be comprehended within the meaning and range of equivalents of the disclosed embodiments. It is to be understood that the phraseology or terminology employed herein is for the purpose of description and not of limitation. Therefore, while the embodiments herein have been described in terms of preferred embodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that the embodiments herein can be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope of the embodiments as described herein.
Throughout this specification, the word “comprise”, or variations such as “comprises” or “comprising”, will be understood to imply the inclusion of a stated element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps, but not the exclusion of any other element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps.
The use of the expression “at least” or “at least one” suggests the use of one or more elements or ingredients or quantities, as the use may be in the embodiment of the disclosure to achieve one or more of the desired objects or results.
Any discussion of documents, acts, materials, devices, articles and the like that has been included in this specification is solely for the purpose of providing a context for the disclosure. It is not to be taken as an admission that any or all of these matters form a part of the prior art base or were common general knowledge in the field relevant to the disclosure as it existed anywhere before the priority date of this application.
The numerical values mentioned for the various physical parameters, dimensions or quantities are only approximations and it is envisaged that the values higher/lower than the numerical values assigned to the parameters, dimensions or quantities fall within the scope of the disclosure, unless there is a statement in the specification specific to the contrary.
While considerable emphasis has been placed herein on the particular features of this disclosure, it will be appreciated that various modifications can be made, and that many changes can be made in the preferred embodiments without departing from the principles of the disclosure. These and other modifications in the nature of the disclosure or the preferred embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the disclosure herein, whereby it is to be distinctly understood that the foregoing descriptive matter is to be interpreted merely as illustrative of the disclosure and not as a limitation.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 201941024667 | Oct 2019 | IN | national |
| 202041005001 | Feb 2020 | IN | national |
| 202041027084 | Jun 2020 | IN | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/IB2020/059605 | 10/13/2020 | WO |
