grain dryer

Already on it.

One bushel 20.0% moisture corn, 59.15 pounds.

One bushel 15.5% moisture corn, 56.00 pounds, 35.71 bushel / ton.

Bushel per acre corn = 180.

Heat of vaporization 970 BTU / pound H2O, let's not count frozen moisture.

100% efficient BTU / ton = 3.25 * 970 * 35.71 = 112575.78 BTU / ton.

Biggest, baddest, most magical GARN = WHS 3200 = 950000 BTU / hour, on a good testing day.

Ton 20% --> 15.5% corn per hour, perfect heat exchanger: 8.4387.

Acre per hour = 0.597315.

YMMV.

Go too the portage and main website and look under accesories, they have one there(a heat echanger that is) I was actually thinking about making some sort of kiln out of something like this to dry wood in.

the coalman 400,000 and 600,000 btu is used predominatly for agriculture ,grain drying dairy farm greenhouses

I am a farmer, and yea, wood would be cheaper to dry with, but we work our butt off all year and the last thing we need to be doing is cutting wood to dry our corn. We use natural and start our dryer at midnight on Monday morning and shut it down Saturday night, we are able to forget about the thing, we have enough to worry about during harvest. Adding wood into the pic and you are adding a whole new aspect to drying corn.

Yea, gas bills are not cheap for a dryer, but I would hate to know what the price of a burner would be that can burn wood to dry wood, then account into it the time to cut 100s of cords of wood that you would need to burn. A farm our size would have to hire on 2-3 more guys all year just to cut the wood.

I heat with wood for my home, but for the farm no thank you.

and during harvest in E Montana, I think you would get shot firing up your fireplace in July/August- That place is a tinderbox with enough wind to burn till the east coast!!

stoker coal boiler,with feed auger and ash removal,no smoke 13,900 btu per pound, poultry houses have cut there gas bill from 38,000.00 per season to 9,000.00 in stoker coal dont take long to pay for a system at that cost ,but your right it is more work than
turning the gas on

If you can buy stoker coal at the mine, I would think that would be a no brainer. I have no idea where you would get coal in our area. Probably have to get a semi load at a time.

thats what i get is a semi load from 270 miles away coal is 100. per ton trucking is 20 .per ton as long as your within 200. miles of a mine coal is no problem to get
its just not as common as it was 30 years ago but its still there and most of our coal is being shipped out of the country
id say that the power plants around you burn coal