The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company

Comet Corporation

Robert A Yano

Harold E Trumbull

Howard C Davis

Finely-divided grain products in general and grain dust in particular are useful fuels which are advantageously employed in the drying of harvested grain to a moisture content suitable for storage and/or further processing. A grain dryer designed for such fuels provides for preheating and predrying fuel prior to feeding it to a burner.

Fuel and apparatus for drying grain

A gravity engine converts one form of energy into another by using the expansion of a fluid medium to propel each of a plurality of bodies upwardly within one of a pair of adjacent vertical passageways. The expansion of a gas, such as steam supplied from a boiler heated by a solar panel, in a chamber and controlled by valves provides the force to propel the bodies against the force of gravity upwardly to the top of the first passageway. A guide directs the bodies from the top of the first passageway to the top of a second passageway wherein the bodies are stacked so that their combined weight acts upon a pocketed drive wheel at the bottom of the second passageway. The drive wheel is coupled to means such as an electrical generator to convert at least a portion of the potential energy of the stacked bodies into another form of energy. The pocketed wheel may also drive a pump used to return condensate water from the engine case to the boiler. The pocketed wheel carries the bodies, e.g., spheroids, from the lower end of the second passageway for passage into the expansion chamber and thence in the next succeeding cycle, along the first vertical passageway.

Growing community of inventors

Worthington, OH, United States of America

Robert A Yano