Cold Open Problems In The Dryer
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 0:01
What do you do when yesterday’s dryer settings start producing today’s results? What happens when incoming moisture suddenly jumps? When discharged moisture starts bouncing? When you’re hitting your moisture target but burning more fuel? Or when harvest is moving fast, brain is backing up, and somebody says, turn it up. We need more pushbults to this dryer.
Why Drying Changes During Harvest
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 0:27
Welcome to the second installment of our special whole grain series on grain drying. My name is Jim Lenz with Grain to Grain Elevator Processing Society. My guest is Rodie Jelleberg, Grain Drying Manager with Superior Grain Equipment. Our first episode, Beyond the Set Point, Rodie took us inside the drying process. We talked about reading a dryer, moisture variability, patients and response time, over drying, strength, throughput, grain quality, and energy. But now we’re going to do something a bit different. Because grain drying doesn’t happen under perfect laboratory conditions, things change, equipment changes, grain changes, weather changes, humidity changes, harvest pressures change. So in this episode, we’re going to concentrate on what happens when conditions change. And during my conversation with Roadie, we created a new whole grain segment right on the spot. Roadie, what would you do? We’ll give him a situation and let him talk us through what he would check, what he wouldn’t assume, and what decision he might make next. We’ll also talk about what happens after green leaves the dryer, warning signs that shouldn’t be ignored, dryer fire risk, maintenance, data, and what separates an experienced dryer from an average one. If you operate, manage, maintain, or work around grain drying systems, think on this episode and its companion episode as resources worth keeping. Let’s get back to my conversation with Roadie.
Drying And Storage Are Connected
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 2:11
How much should a person operating a dryer understand about what happens to that grain after it leaves? I kind of already know my answer to this question based off your input so far in this conversation. But should drying and storage really be thought of as one connected system?
Rodie Jelleberg 2:30
I think everything that, you know, if you’re guys will spend so much time and effort on making sure that your growing process, they’re putting the right chemicals, the right fertilizers in, so that that product comes out, you know, at X amount of bushels per acre, and we’ve got the right test weight. But then we’ll run it through a system that you know has got choke points and we’re doing damage and we’re maybe not storing it at the correct temperature, we’re not cooling it down correctly, we’re not you know, you’re dumping in the bin and you’re just hoping that it’s you’re you’re you’re running on hopes and dreams in a sense. You know, and if you don’t have a way to know what that grain in the bin is is doing, you know, if you don’t have a temp cable system or a you know, CO2 is the new new thing with their monitoring CO2 levels, you know you need to know that what that stuff in the bin is doing because you can’t necessarily get in there and see the middle of the bin. So yeah, it’s it’s all connected anywhere from from planting all the way through until you market that grain, it’s an asset that is worth X today. And if you don’t keep it in condition, it’s gonna be less than X.
Roadie What Would You Do
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 3:54
Awesome. Awesome. In fact, you know what? This is so wonderful. Your breadth and scope of grain drying, it’s such a critically important part of operations. I think I’m gonna come up with a segment. I’m gonna call right now Roadie. Roadie, what would you do? That that’s actually gonna be the name of the segment, okay? Roadie, what would you do? So I’m gonna give you some brief scenarios and I’m gonna ask you to just briefly process through and then I’m gonna jump to another scenario, okay? So I’m gonna give you several situations. Imagine you’re standing next to the operator, Roadie, okay? Tell me what you’re thinking and what you want to investigate before making decision. No long setup, you’re in the facility. You ready, Roadie?
Rodie Jelleberg 4:40
Yep.
Moisture Jumps And Bouncing Readings
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 4:42
Okay, this is Roadie. What would you do? Corn has been coming into the facility around 20% moisture, a new field starts arriving, and suddenly we’re seeing 24 or 25 percent. What do you do?
Rodie Jelleberg 4:57
First thing I’m gonna do is if we’re running an automatic moisture controller, is I’m gonna watch the next hour to see what or then I should say next hour, depending on what the throughput rate is. I’m gonna take that time and over that time period, I’m gonna watch to make sure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing and slowing it down to make sure that the stuff going in now is coming out at the same target moisture. After that hour, if it’s not, then I have to do some investigation to figure out why. Is it is it something in the model that’s not correct, or is it something in the dryer that’s not are we getting conflicting information? Most part I’m just gonna observe and make sure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to to start with.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 5:46
That’s awesome. That’s scenario one moisture jump. We’re now in scenario two, the bouncing number. Discharge moisture isn’t staying where the operator wants it. The immediate reaction is let’s change the temperature. What do you want checked before someone starts changing dryer settings?
Rodie Jelleberg 6:09
So this goes back to the either the manual process or if we’re doing automated. Automated, if it’s jumping, the first thing I’m gonna have them look at or check is going to be calibrations. Have they been calibrating the moisture, the output moisture sensor to make sure that it’s accurate compared to their moisture tester? If that’s the case and we’re still getting some, if we’re if that’s the case, then we could have a moisture sensor failure. If we are drying manually in the other scenario, if it’s bouncing around, rather than just go right for the temperature, is I’m gonna take a step back and again I’m gonna make a small change and observe and see over the next hour, hour and a half, two hours, whatever the throughput rate is. I want to make sure that we make a small change and make sure that that’s registering accurately when it’s coming out.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 7:07
Awesome. You’re doing so good at the segment called Roadie. What would you do?
Fuel Use And Capacity Pressure
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 7:13
All right, we’re at scenario three. I call it the energy problem. We’re reaching our target moisture. Grain looks good, but our fuel consumption has noticeably increased. Where do you start?
Rodie Jelleberg 7:28
First thing I’m gonna do is I’m gonna look at, again, I’m gonna look at my fans. I’m actually gonna do an amp draw test to make sure that we’re pushing the fans accordingly, but we’re not pushing them to the point where they’re uh overdrawing amps. But I want to make sure all of our amps or all of our fan amperage consistently the same. You know, it’s within a certain range. I don’t want one fan pushing harder or one fan that’s not pushing near as hard as the rest. That’s okay, then I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna look at the pressure. I’m gonna look at our incoming pressure on our gas. I’m gonna look and make sure that we’re running only what we need to. And if we’re pushing excess gas, I mean we’re basically that’s we’re burning off gas that we don’t need. So maybe we can be running at a little bit lower pressure. Maybe we were running higher pressure because it was colder out last year or earlier in the season, and now we’re, you know, something has changed and we don’t need to be pushing it as hard. Now we can dial that gas pressure back a little bit. If that seems to take care of it, great. If not, the next thing I’m gonna look at is the burner itself. The the burners have little orifices every inch along that the length of that burner. Some of those might be plugged. Maybe we got a bunch of those that are plugged and that that burner isn’t operating at top efficiency. So we’ll have to go through there and basically make sure that all of the dirt or any of the splash per se of our excess corn that’s gotten in there hasn’t been blocking those holes. And now we’ve made sure that all that stuff is cleared out and that burner is completely 100% clean, and all those orifices are open so that we can be running that thing at peak efficiency.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 9:14
Incredible, doing great. Scenario 4 pushing capacity. Harvest is moving faster than expected, grain is backing up. Someone says, turn it up. We need more bushels through this dryer. What do you want that team to think about before pushing harder?
Rodie Jelleberg 9:34
Just to understand what that cause and effect relationship is. If we’re talking pushing it another five degrees to get a few more hundred bushels per hour out of it, if we’re in that mid-range and we’re we’re talking that quality versus throughput, if we’re in the middle of that and we’ve got room to go, great. Just understand that we’re probably not gonna get the quality out of it that we did prior. And if we’re at the top of that range and we push it more than what it should be, just understanding that that risk that we’re now we’re talking about possibly the risk goes up exponentially uh for fires and accidents as we start pushing things. Thank you again.
Hot Grain Cooling And Humidity
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 10:24
Scenario five, hot grain. We’re hitting our moisture target, but the grain is coming out hotter than we like it, and it needs to move into storage. What’s the decision-making process now, Brody?
Rodie Jelleberg 10:38
So it depends on, and we talk a lot about this, especially with guys that have had older dryers, that when we talk about dumping hot, dumping hot was typically 140 to 160 degrees coming out of the dryer. You would get that extra point, point and a half removal in the bin if it once it started to cool. It’s not necessarily the case on like the dryers that we manufacture. They’re you know, we’re dumping it typically 50 degrees above ambient is is at most. But if it’s coming out hotter than we want, and there’s certain certain things we have to consider, is it goes back to when we talk about throughput. The faster we’re running that product through, the less time it has, or less retention time it has in those cooling tiers and those cooling levels. So we can either drop the temperature, which is gonna do two things. It’s gonna our dryer overall dryer temp isn’t gonna be as hot, so we’re not gonna raise that temperature as high in the kernel. And we’re also gonna slow that dryer down at the same time, so our retention time in the cooling is gonna be longer, and we’re gonna get some of that cooling. If we don’t want to do that, if those aren’t options, we’re just basically we we biggest thing we have to do is we have to put it in the bin and cool it down, but we need to do it safely without doing damage. Typically, by the time you get, depending on what size fans and what style of fans and stuff you have. If you’re two rings up on your bin when it’s time to kick that kick the fans on, because you can’t under an aeration floor, if you kick it on any sooner, you risk tipping over supports doing floor damage. But once you have that much grain in there, you can typically put your w your hot corn or hot product in that bin, and unless it’s zero degrees outside, that fan, you can hit that that mass of grain with that air, that ambient air, and you’re gonna move a cooling front through that, and you should be just fine. If it is colder than what you want, you don’t want to risk that shock cooling. The biggest thing would be to dump it in there, you know, and give it a couple hours of just acclimation time before you kick it on. You know, and then you’re not you you more have to worry about it is the the shock cooling. That the dumping hot isn’t necessarily an issue unless it’s warm outside and you’re you still have wet product. But if you’re dumping hot and it’s cold outside and you have such a change in in temperature, that’s when it’s just you give it an acclimation time to just kind of get that grain mass acclimated a little bit to the surrounding conditions before you introduce that super chilled air.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 13:45
Yeah, and you’ve mentioned already, but the shock cooling can do scenario six, something changed. Same dryer, same crop, same settings, but today’s drying performance isn’t anything like yesterday’s. What changed? Where does your mind go first, Rohdy?
Rodie Jelleberg 14:06
The first thing that that I always when something drastically changes from day to day, time of day, and surprisingly, uh or not surprisingly, but most guys think that temperature has the biggest effect on drying. It’s not necessarily temperature, it’s the humidity in the air is a huge factor. The humidity affects drying more so than temperature that I found. The higher relative humidity we have outside, the less the less put air potential that you have to to hold water in that air. So higher humidity, it’s gonna take more energy to get that water out. Um your throughputs are gonna be down. So the biggest thing that that if something is changed from day to day, and you can watch actually if you look at the charts on the on the automated moisture controller, when you watch the the you’ll see the drying rates will stay consistent, but you’ll see the uh the throughput rates drop. And if you looked at it in a vacuum without any numbers on it, and you could see about the time that it probably between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. on a 24-hour period. That’s when your humidity is humidity is the highest, and it’s doing everything it can to basically just slow it down and keep up with the humidity. As soon as that sun comes out, you know, it takes the dew off the grass, gets some of that humidity out of the air, you’ll see those throughput rates start climbing again.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 15:43
That all is so helpful. Thank you for this segment. Rodie, what would you do? First one on the History of the Whole Green podcast. And we have to have that again in the future, I think. So we’ll conclude that. We’re almost complete here. Thank you so much, Roadie. You’re doing terrific. Let’s look on uh when something is wrong.
Warning Signs And Fire Risk
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 16:06
During harvest, downtime is painful, but trying to operate through a developing problem can create much larger consequences. What warning sign should make an operator stop and investigate rather than simply keep running?
Rodie Jelleberg 16:23
It goes back to what I’ve I’ve said numerous times is is that using your senses, does something not sound right? Do you have all of a sudden you have a squeak or a squeal or a grinding noise, something that wasn’t there before? You know, rather than ignore it and just say, well, you know, it’s something, it’s it’s it should be fine. It’s probably something that should be looked at sooner than later. If things don’t sound quite right, if things don’t smell quite right, if things don’t look quite right, a lot of times we tend to just it’ll be fine, we can we can deal with that in an hour, or we can deal with that tomorrow. We always have to remember, we just talked about a little bit ago, is if something small turns into something catastrophic and large, that could turn downtime of two hours into the rest of the season, or if you have a severe catastrophic event which God forbid takes out your entire psych, now you’ve taken your entire livelihood for the year and you’ve put that all in jeopardy because of something that’s a two-hour downtime might have taken two hours to fix. Or even five minutes to investigate. There’s there’s always we’re always super busy, we’re always hectic, we’re always trying to to do five things at once, but sometimes it’s just taking that step back and saying, Nope, I’ve got to investigate this now. Everything else can wait because this could possibly be something that’s big.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 18:01
About a year and a half ago, I facilitated a webinar with one of our members who actually was on site uh at the facility for a grain dryer fire, and it was substantial. There were images that were taken of the day. Uh, I recommend people go to the Jeeps video library section and type in grain dryer fire, and you’ll go right to that video that takes us to a recorded webinar. I think it’s uh really important experience.
Rodie Jelleberg 18:32
And it doesn’t it doesn’t take long. I mean, that’s the thing is when you when you look at what you have with a grain dryer, is you have massive amounts of gas as far as millions of BTUs of potential energy, you have huge amounts of air moving through a combustible product, you know, and you combine those three, and it doesn’t take very long for a hot spot to turn into a smoldering spot that turns into a fire, and once you get that going and it gets more air to it, you you turn that thing into a you know from a space heater into a blast furnace in a matter of seconds.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 19:21
Absolutely. Dryer fires are obviously something nobody wants to experience without turning this into an entire safety program. What conditions or operating practices tend to increase dryer fire risk? And what should operators be especially vigilant about during a long harvest?
Rodie Jelleberg 19:39
So we talked about that earlier with the with the lake form material. That’s that’s a that’s a big one. A lot of it is also making sure that you’ve got product moving through that dryer, keeping your making sure your dryer is clean at the end of the season and the beginning of the next season goes a long ways. Inside there, where you know what however your meeting roll system is is set up, you know, making sure that you’ve got all that stuff cleaned out. Typically we’ll tell guys at the end of the season, open up your clean out doors, just leave them open. There’s no reason you need to close them. If stuff gets up in there, if they’re gonna try to get up in there, they’re gonna animals are gonna try to get up in there anyway. So you might as well make it so that whatever they’re trying to build a nest or home, whatever it is, is open so that they don’t have that spot where they can build up stuff, and now it’s now all of a sudden you’ve got a metering roll that’s plugged. Because issues arise, it’s because stuff is not moving. So whether that’s again the light form material not moving in one section, or you have product that’s not moving because it can’t move, because you’ve got a metering roll that’s plugged, or a section that’s blocked or bridged. So it’s just having good practices and making sure that every so often you are going out there and looking at that dryer, or maybe you’re crawling up and going up to the top platform to make sure that you can see that everything is moving. If you’ve got the ability, if you’ve got walk-around platforms, make sure that everything is moving and you don’t have a spot that’s just sitting there idle. Because when stuff is not moving, that’s when we start having problems.
Data Tracking And Operator Skill
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 21:20
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When you think about what you said here and trying to identify the experienced operator, our listeners coming from a broad base of spectrum and the use of grain jars, likely. But we’ve talked about technology, equipment, settings, but there’s still a human being making decisions. So if you think about what really separates a good dryer operator from an average one, there’s a lot to that. I mean, there’s technical knowledge, and you really talked about patience so well in this. Patience is actually a trait, I think. That would be based on, you know, I summarized what you said, this attention to detail, but also understanding that entire grain system. Aren’t those uh such critically important pieces of what makes a a good grain dryer? Absolutely. All right, now tracking, what are what are the best operators really documenting or tracking? Could an operator use information from this harvest to make next year’s dryer operation better, for example?
Rodie Jelleberg 22:26
Absolutely. I mean tracking everything from your gas costs, obviously what your what your moisture variability was, what your t moisture was coming out of the field, what you were taking it out at, what your yields were, your test weights, you know, what were you running the dryer at for temperatures, what was the ambient conditions. You you could really get down and and you know, it might be a lot of maybe extraneous information, but the more information that you track and and it gives you the ability to analyze that data to make better decisions. You know, and you don’t necessarily want to track data that’s just for the sake of tracking data. But if you’re gonna if you really want to be down and dirty and as efficient as possible, gather all that data because everything and all we’ve talked about all the different factors that that affect drying. And if you can get that down to the nitty-gritty and figure out exactly where the most economical or ideal conditions and things to run your run your dryer, how to get the best product out of it. It’s gonna make you more profitable. And we talked about you know, just pennies over bushels, how much that makes a huge difference.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 23:52
Fantastic, fantastic.
Rapid Fire Takeaways And Resources
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 23:54
Alright, rapid fire, one thing. Let’s keep answers super short. So this is one thing. Here it is the situation. One dryer problem. Operators too often blame on the dryer that isn’t actually a dryer problem.
Rodie Jelleberg 24:11
So we talked about that earlier. That would be the the the breakage coming out of the dryer.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 24:17
One number operators should pay more attention to. Definitely. One maintenance item they shouldn’t neglect. Clean out at the end of the season. One sign something isn’t right. Something smells off. One place facilities unnecessarily waste energy. Overdrying. One grain quality mistake that’s difficult to undo. Overdrying. One thing operators should do before harvest begins.
Rodie Jelleberg 24:55
Just fire that dryer.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 25:00
If someone listening remembers only one thing from this entire conversation when they’re standing in front of their dryer, this harvest, what do you want it to be? Patience is a virtue. Excellent. Rodie, something that really stands out from this conversation is that it is effective grain drying isn’t about finding one perfect setting and and walking away. The grain changes, the weather changes, operating conditions change, and what happens at the dryer can affect what happens weeks and of course months later in storage. So perhaps one of the most valuable tools an operator has isn’t simply the control panel, it’s understanding the system well enough to recognize what’s changing, knowing what information matters, and knowing when to make an adjustment and when to give the dryer time to do its job. Rolly Jelliberg, grain drying manager with Superior Grain Equipment, you have been absolutely fantastic. Thank you for sharing your experience with the whole grain podcast. I know this will be one of their favorite episodes, and the timing is so critical. But these are things that can take someone from uh a veteran and can help and support them and provide some insights. And those who are newer in in grain facilities, this is just gold, absolutely gold. So we appreciate your time on behalf of the Jeeps organization. Thank you so much. And and Rodi, I just want to say, tell us about your organization, how they may be able to reach Superior Grain, you please share any insights and we can put that in the show notes as well.
Rodie Jelleberg 26:41
So superior grain equipment started back in the late 70s, and we began as a grain grain bin construction company, selling grain bins, putting them up. And then we started making our own grain bins in 2008, 2013, we took on the dryer program. I was kind of involved in that since day one with the dryer program. So we manufacture and sell uh either direct to consumer or to dealers worldwide grain bins, grain handling systems, grain dryers, and try to provide solutions for for our customers.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS (Host) 27:22
Fantastic. Again, we’ll get that in the show notes. And what’s the the website for Superior Grain? SuperiorBins.com. Alright, Superior Grain Equipment. We have Roadie. Thank you so much for being a guest on the GEAPS Whole Grain Podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me, Jim. Patience is a virtue. I think that’s an appropriate place to end this two-part conversation because if there’s one thing Rodie has demonstrated across these two episodes, is that operating a grain dryer well isn’t about constantly changing something. It’s about paying attention. Know your grain, know your equipment, know your system. Understand what normal looks, sounds, and even smells like. And when something changes, don’t immediately assume you know why. Observe, gather information, understand the cause and effect relationship, make deliberate adjustments, and give the system time to respond. That combination of knowledge, experience, and patience can affect grain quality, energy use, throughput, storage, and ultimately profitability. Rodie Jelleberg, grain drying manager with Superior Grain Equipment, thank you for spending so much time with us and for being so generous with your knowledge. And if you haven’t listened to the companion episode, Beyond the Set Point, Making Better Grain Drying Decisions During Harvest, I encourage you to listen to that episode as well. It was published right before this one. Together, these two episodes were designed to be a practical crane trying resource for professionals throughout the industry. And your learning doesn’t have to stop here. Rodie also recently joined GEAPS for our webinar, Drying Crane for Quality, Safety and Profit. GEAPS Live webinars are available to green professionals throughout the industry. Jeeps members also have access to our extensive on-demand video library of recorded webinars and educational videos. And that’s just part of the education and professional development available through GEAPS. You’ll find online courses, webinars, industry resources, events, networking opportunities, and many other ways to build your knowledge and connect with great professionals around the world. Visit GEAPS.com to explore everything Jeeps has to offer. To learn about becoming a GEAPS member and resources available exclusively to members, visit GEAPS.com slash membership. And you’ll find the Whole Grain podcast to include previous episodes, show information and more at GEAPS.com slash whole grain. Be sure to subscribe to Whole Grain on your favorite podcast platform so you don’t miss our upcoming conversations with people and organizations helping move the grain industry forward. And of course you can check up on past episodes as well. The Whole Grain Podcast, which delivers to listeners and grain professionals from 113 countries around the world, is presented by GEAPS, the grain elevator and processing society, where our mission is to champion, connect, and serve the global crane industry and our members. My name is Jim Lenz, your host and producer of the Whole Grain Podcast and director of global education and training at GEAPS. Thank you for listening. Stay safe, keep learning, and we’ll see you the next time on the Whole Grain Podcast.
