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Hazelton, Kansas | CEO,
OK, let's run some ROUGH numbers. Just to see if anything close to enough energy is there.
1. Let's assume the combine burns 20 gallons of diesel per hour, and harvests 4000 bushels of grain an hour. I think I'm high on energy per bushel, but feel free to make your own assumptions.
2. A good grain drier needs ~1000 BTU to remove 1 lb of water, right?
3. HHV of diesel is roughly 140,000 BTU/gal. So the combine consumes 2,800,000 BTU/hr. It rejects roughly 2/3 of that, or 1,900,000 BTU/hr. So, at best it can remove 1900 lbs of water.
4. 4000 bu of corn weighs 224,000 lbs. So the estimated moisture reduction, even if ALL the waste heat could be effectively utilized, is roughly 1900/224,000=.0084, or 0.84%.
5. Please correct me if I slipped a decimal somewhere.
Throw in a bit of duct heat loss, low residence time on the combine, heat exchanger losses, combine weight, service access, etc., and another noble idea gets murdered by ruthless reality.
And that's before we even start to consider test weight, shrink, wind chill, tire inflation, and Coriolis acceleration. :-)
But...if you can also reclaim all the hydraulic cooler heat...and the AC condenser heat...and the bearing friction...oh, never mind.
Regards.
MDS
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Another random grain drying thought
