Drying is the process of removal of water or other organic liquids from process materials or other substances. Drying is required in order to remove excessive liquid not desired in the material as for the case of foods it is crucial that the drying process is adequate in order not to damage the food product and stay consumable by the people. Drying prevents the growth of bacteria, yeast, or mold not desired in the food products. Also, drying provides a crucial step before storing or packaging food in order to prevent them from going bad. Drying can be done using evaporators, sun drying, air drying, even smoking or wind drying that has been used for many years in the past, but now there are several methods that has been designed with the purpose to facilitate this procedure by providing more effective drying results and faster. Such of methods will vary in cost and it may not be as economical as air drying may result, but it allows the process of bigger size industrial processes to be very efficient and faster that end up making more money than what the company spent initially in the equipment to achieve such of process.

For the following project the purpose is to select and size an appropriate dryer to dry grains for storage that can be effective and reasonable in cost. Since the product to be dried are grains continuous flow drying is the best process to obtain a moisture content lower for storage purposes. In order to design a good grain dryer the properties of grains need to be studied in order to provide an ideal design. The particular grains of study are wheat and barley.
The designing specifications of the this project were to select a dryer type, to determine the size of the dryer, and to perform mass and energy balance for small scale for wheat grain and industrial scale for barley grain. It was determined the type of dryer necessary for this process based on the most cost effective system for a company to achieve the drying of grains as wheat or barley to be continuous flow system. Also, Depending on the type of grain the moisture contents could vary, which should be taking into consideration when designing an efficient system. Wheat and barley were determined to be similar in storage moisture content desired, which the designing of the dryer is mostly depending on the flow rate at which the grain is being introduced into the system and the airflow for drying the grain. The airflow arrangement played a crucial factor that affects the drying rate significantly as the specific flow used in this project was cross flow. Continuous flow dryers are ideal for grain drying in major industrial processes that designing is done based on specifications by the company and the type of application for the grain as in the making of beer, food produces, or pharmaceutical applications. A moisture content decrease of 27% for wheat and 3% for barley was observed in this project at the pilot and industrial level.