Upgrade secures future for on-farm grain drying

• Auto-drying with remote alert

• Quieter, cleaner and efficient

• Easier to use and to maintain

A Bedfordshire grower is reaping the rewards after replacing an ageing PTO-driven grain dryer with a state-of-the-art mobile machine.

Sandy Wade-Gery, who farms with son Will at Bushmead Farm at Colmworth, near Bedford, installed a new automatic electric Mecmar SSI 28T mobile dryer, supplied and supported by McArthur BDC.

“Our old mobile dryer was reaching end of life and we needed to upgrade to an automated solution providing larger capacity and improved energy efficiency,” says Mr Wade-Gery, who grows some 400ha of combinable crops.

The Mecmar SSI 28T stood out for its build quality and its ease of use, particularly the remote access capability of the dryer’s control panel, which sends an SMS notification to the operator when the dried grain is ready to be discharged.

Quieter drying

“There is no longer the need for the operator to be constantly monitoring the dryer,” said Mr Wade-Gery. “The old dryer tied up a tractor and the burners were driven by gas from a bulk tank. It was noisy, and dusty.”

The new electric Mecmar uses diesel from an onboard tank to power the burners. It is super-quiet and has an integrated dust extraction system – two features which mean it sometimes can’t be heard working.

The old dryer was precarious and difficult to maintain, whereas the Mecmar is much easier to look after as the grease points are positioned in one central location beside the control panel.

The Mecmar dryer is fully automatic, streamlining the entire drying cycle. From the field, grain can be tipped directly into the loading auger from the trailer. It can also be loaded with a telehandler via a portable hopper placed over the loading auger.

Using the Mecmar’s control panel which has pre-set drying programmes, configured by the operator at the beginning of harvest, the correct programme is selected so grain is dried precisely to the required moisture content.

Intake hopper

Once set, the grain is automatically fed from the intake hopper to the Mecmar and as soon as the mid-level sensor located inside the dryer is covered, the fan and burner starts and drying begins.

When the high-level sensor is covered the loading auger stops automatically. As the grain recirculates within the dryer, the Mecmar’s aspirator, located at the top of the central auger, removes dust and chaff, improving the bushel weight of the crop.

Once grain reaches the target temperature, the dryer then enters a predetermined cooling cy-cle. Once cooled, the Mecmar’s integrated moisture content meter checks the grain to deter-mine that it is at or below the pre-selected target moisture content.

If the moisture check is correct, grain is then automatically discharged.

When the low-level sensor is uncovered and the dryer is empty, the loading auger automatically starts, feeding grain into the dryer so that the next batch begins – making the drying process as timely and as efficient as possible.

Unloading grain

When the operator receives a notification from the control panel that the grain is ready to unload and, if a trailer is in place, he allows grain to be discharged and taken to the store.

“The Mecmar is light years ahead of our old dryer,” says Mr Wade-Gery.

“We wanted a dryer that delivered an auto-mated solution, was efficient, quieter, reliable and would meet our drying requirements well into the future,” he adds.

“McArthur’s support, which was a significant factor in our choice of the Mecmar, has been excellent and the whole system fits perfectly with our forward-thinking approach to farming.

“To keep moving forward we are looking at relocating the Mecmar into a dedicated grain store and adding a colour sorter to further enhance how we process our grain”