Investigation on the Performance of Producer Gas Fired Reversible Flat-Bed Dryer

Rice is one of the important crops which supplies energy to around 80% of the world population. Paddy drying is an energy intensive process as huge amount of energy is required for drying. Direct combustion of rice husk or wood is followed at the mills to generate heat which is found to be less efficient and highly environment polluting. Hence it is necessary to adopt an energy efficient and environment friendly equipment for drying parboiled paddy. This paper presents a new method of paddy drying in a reversible flat-bed dryer using producer gas as fuel from rice husk gasification. The drying experiment was conducted with the parboiled paddy at the temperature of 70°C for 6.5 h to reduce the moisture content from 38.4% to 14%. The energy usage during the drying operation is in the range of 0.9-0.09 kJ/s. The overall system efficiency of the gasifier operated reversible flat-bed dryer and the reversible flat-bed dryer are 50.75% and 38.08% respectively.