Beard Industries

Thomas D Lentz

A grain drying apparatus of a type including, a pair of spaced apart air pervious walls for confining a column of grain to be dried. A plenum chamber is formed on one side of the innermost of the air pervious walls. A blower or the like is provided for causing heated air from said plenum chamber to pass through the spaced air pervious walls and therefore through said column of grain to be dried. A grain diverting plate is disposed between and spaced from the spaced air pervious walls. A first portion of the plate which is closest to the innermost air pervious wall is higher than a second portion of said plate which is closest to the outermost air pervious wall. This creates a void under the angled plate. The angle of the plate is steep enough to allow grain to flow against it on the bottom side, therefore grain will completely flow into and fill the void. The grain next to the outside skin of the dryer is restricted into a funnel with the outlet being smaller than the inlet. This causes a slower grain velocity channel to form in this region. The side of the funnel also creates a boundary not allowing grain next to the outside wall of the dryer to flow into the void area under the plate. Because the plate is angled up towards the inside skin of the dryer, the grain next to the inside skin of the dryer will flow around the plate and into the void first. This grain next to the inside skin forms a higher velocity grain channel. The net effect of the higher velocity channel which is formed next to the inside skin and the slower velocity channel which is formed next to the outside skin is that the grain next to the inside skin is displaced farther down the column than the grain next to the outside skin. This effect is only created in the region around the moisture equalizer device. The regions inside the column above and below the moisture equalizer device are in mass flow condition with all grain moving down the column at the same velocity at any specific horizontal cross section.

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Zionsville, IN, United States of America

Thomas D Lentz