Design, development and performance evaluation of a fluidized bed paddy dryer

Pankaj Kalita; Tanmay Jyoti Deka; Samar Das; Dudul Das; Rupam Kataki

Authors

Pankaj Kalita Centre for Energy, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati-781 039, India
Tanmay Jyoti Deka Department of Energy, Tezpur University, Sonitpur- 784 028, India
Samar Das Centre for Energy, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati-781 039, India
Dudul Das Centre for Energy, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati-781 039, India
Rupam Kataki Department of Energy, Tezpur University, Sonitpur- 784 028, India

Keywords:

Paddy drying, Fluidized bed, Moisture content, Inventory, Drying time, Nutritional value

Abstract

In this study a fluidized bed paddy dryer has been developed and its performance was investigated. The fuel used for generation of heat required for drying is wood rejects. In order to investigate the performance of the dryer, the experiments were performed at four different inventories and at three different air velocities. The locally available paddy variety “Ranjit” was used for experiments. The drying air temperature was maintained within 58-62 °C to retain all the nutrients content. The change in nutritional values was also determined at different drying times viz. at 0, 5 and 10 minutes from the start of the experiment and found to decrease with drying time as compared to the fresh sample. From the experiment it is evident that the drying rate increases with increase of air velocity and found to be optimum at an air velocity of 23.60 m/s.