Feasibility of Heat Exchanger Designs to Preheat Grain Using Dryer Exhaust Air

Commercially available grain dryers currently available consume 1800 to 3000 Btu of energy to evaporate one pound of water out of the grain whereas the theoretical requirement is 1100 Btu. For both environmental and economic reasons it would be very beneficial if one can design and produce a grain dryer with dramatically improved efficiencies. We are exploring possible methods to achieve this goal. The purpose of our work is to determine the feasibility of recovering waste heat from a properly designed grain dryer and thereby gain significant energy savings.