Portable Drying Systems

Throughputs up to about 200 lb./hr.

The use of Portable Dry/Convey units has to be weighed against Central Drying/Conveying to see which option is best for any given processor.

The concept of a drying system that can move from machine to machine actually developed with processors themselves who modified equipment into portable devices because they needed to:

• Install other auxiliaries on their machines
• Eliminate tall, potentially unsafe drying hoppers on machine throats
• Pre-heat material elsewhere, prior to actual processing at the machine
• Rapidly remove drying equipment from the machine for cleanout and material change
• Do cleaning and maintenance in other, better suited, locations
• Use drying equipment to be only when necessary, and to remove it at other times

All of these reasons make a great deal of sense if you are only doing occasional drying.

Central Drying/Conveying (link to: http://www.novatec.com/central-dryers.html ) is usually the most efficient way to get materials to your machines if:

• You have dryers on 10 or more machines
• You have a single material that requires drying and it is required at multiple machines
• You have frequent material changes on your machines
• You use more material types than you have machines
• You have dryer to dryer quality issues when drying the same material
• You want to expand, but do not have sufficient space

Still, Portable Dry/Convey units are very popular and several types of dryers are available as Dry/Convey models including:

• Desiccant Wheel Dryers
• Dual Bed Desiccant Dryers
• Compressed Air/Membrane dryers

Since these models include the Dryer, Drying Hopper, a Vacuum Pump and a Vacuum Loader for the drying hopper, all mounted on a frame with casters, it is not practical to use them in capacities above about 200 lb./hr. (which generally means using an 800 lb. capacity hopper).

Controls have to be designed for both drying and conveying functions. Some microprocessor controls use various codes to describe errors and function buttons for programming parameters. There are also touch screen controls with intuitive icons and keypads for programming functions. With touch screen controls, errors are clearly spelled out in easily understood text messages.