A Walk‐in Drying Room for Removing Moisture from Seed Crops of Forage Introductions¹

Abstract

A walk‐in drying room was constructed to remove field moisture from forage legume and grass harvested for seed. Steam at 48–50 p.s.i. was used as a heat source. The heat was transferred from thin coils to a moving air stream. Air flow was forced up or down through bags of drying plant materials. The temperature of the moving air may be adjusted, and there were 10 settings of circulation from completely recirculated air to completely exhausted air after a single cycle. Performance of the drying room was evaluated by drying 96 alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) plants that had been separated into three components: tops, crowns, and roots. The initial moisture content was highest in the tops, intermediate in the crowns, and lowest in the roots. With the room operating at 43.5 C and with completely recirculating hot air, the tops dried most rapidly, crowns dried at an intermediate rate, and roots dried more slowly than either tops or crowns. At the end of 96 hours all three plant parts were equal in retained moisture content, and at 144 hours loss in weight had completely ceased and all three plant parts had attained stable dry weight.

Oven Drying of Small Herbage Samples1

“…The constant rate period of drying was a linear function of time until 80% DM was reached (Fig. 2) and agrees with predictions (2,3). Correlation between percentage DM (below 80%) and drying time for all treatments varied between 0.91 and 0.98.…”