Blueprint: Solar-Regenerated Desiccant Grain Dryer (One-Tonne) — Build Specification
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: DESIGN BLUEPRINT — SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED — NOT BUILT. A full build specification for a solar-regenerated desiccant grain dryer for one tonne of smallholder grain, drawn from the source paper: William Alexander Aldred, 'A Solar-Regenerated Desiccant Dryer for One Tonne of Smallholder Grain: Water Budget, Sizing and Failure Limits', DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.24108462. The blueprint specifies the drying chamber for one tonne, a desiccant bed of 191.6 kg of silica gel (0.20 m deep, 1.37 m2 plan area), a 24.0 m2 flat-plate solar collector, the airflow path and fan duty (275.2 m3/h at 700 Pa, 119 W fan, 495 W peak photovoltaic supply), dimensions, materials with quantities, an assembly sequence, the dry/regenerate operating cycle (8 hours regeneration at 80 C, then 16 hours of adsorption drying, three cycles, 3.0 days), the operating envelope including the insolation failure floor of 3.15 kWh/m2/day and the schedule limit of 4.20 kWh/m2/day, tolerances, failure modes, and maintenance including gel regeneration and replacement. Every performance number comes from the source paper; derived build quantities are computed in the accompanying compute.py and recorded in results.json. No dryer built to this blueprint has been tested.
Author: Aldred, William Alexander
Language: English
Topic: Food Drying and Modeling
Subfield: Food Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225759343
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