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May 01, 2017

02/05/2017: Dryers: Keeping your competitive edge in an ever changing environment

by Joanna Thorne, JW Installations, UK

Whether you are farming grain or milling it, each crop and each year brings different challenges to achieving a consistently good quality product with minimum waste and maximum profitability


 
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An ever-increasing population means there’s more demand from the outset of the food chain to reduce waste through efficient production and the use of energy efficient machinery. Add to this the many variables out of your control such as the weather and the changing environment, and it’s evident that looking at how you adapt the processing and milling of your grain to rise to these challenges and achieve the best product is crucial.

Investing in reliable, high quality and easily maintained grain drying and processing machinery can help you gain and keep your competitive advantage. Finding the right equipment for your needs, however, can be a daunting task.

JWI have more than 30 years experience working with a variety of trusted manufacturers, and offer unbiased advice to deliver competitively priced, high quality seed and grain conditioning solutions.

JWI Director, Charles White comments, “We only work with well known and well established brands that have built a reputation for being customer focused and forward thinking. Coming from a farming background ourselves, we understand the importance of working as efficiently as possible at the production stage and of meeting specific customer needs by ensuring we find the right machinery for their product.”

He continues, “If we look at grain drying for example, doing it precisely is a complex process. Relying on manual drying can risk either not attaining the desired moisture content, or over-drying the grain, which results in waste and is a costly exercise. Overstepping the mark by drying to 13 percent instead of 14 percent can typically add up to 20 percent to your energy bill, whilst at the same time reducing your dryer's capacity by up to 16 percent.”

However get this process right and you keep waste to a minimum and achieve the best possible grain quality for the best price. Charles added, “For many years, our dryers have been developed to reduce energy consumption in grain handling and to offer effective, reliable and energy-efficient heat sources. This allows us to help keep our customers’ costs and environmental impact down and on a wider scale contribute to both the environmental and economic sustainability of the industry.”

How efficiency is improved

Fellow JWI Director, James White explains how the latest dryers tackle these challenges, “Our Allmet range of grain dryers is easy to operate and benefit from the latest improvements in efficiency and low energy consumption.

They provide a choice of heating sources from traditional diesel, kerosene, gas and hot air furnaces to hot water coils. “Hot-water coils are especially adapted for Allmet’s modular systems. Working to a counterflow principle they are highly efficient and offer customers the option of using alternative, greener energy sources including straw, chips and pellets.

“Also thanks to our partnership with Tornum AB, one of Europe’s largest grain dryer manufacturers, we are able give you total control over the drying process by installing the Tornum Intelligent Drier Control (IDC) system on the newer models. A software based control system, the IDC is used in continuous flow dryers. It takes the guesswork out of drying by monitoring and controlling the out-going moisture content. This in turn sets the speed of the dryer discharge and so obtains the required average moisture content of the grain, irrespective of the outside weather. The benefits are numerous from reducing waste by reducing the risk of over drying and increasing drying capacity to reducing labour costs because fewer man hours are needed to monitor drying.”

To further improve efficiency JWI also offer Tornum’s Heat Recovery (HR) dryer. This has been developed specifically by Tornum for the purpose of reducing the energy consumption of grain dryers. It makes use of the energy that would be lost in a traditional dryer, recovering up to 30 percent of the heat. Indeed its unique design also provides a quieter and cleaner work environment.


Read the full article HERE.
 

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.


For additional daily news from milling around the world: global-milling.com

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