Improving Crop Drying Capacity

Traditional Method of Drying

Drying is an indispensable process in many food industries. A large quantity of food products are dried to improve shelf life, reduce packaging cost, lower shipping weights, enhance appearance, encapsulate original flavor and maintain nutritional value.

But the traditional drying methods have many disadvantages :

Thar heat pumps offer an alternative to the expensive use of propane in crop drying

Western farmers tend to use vast amounts of propane to dry crops, often burning gas for months on end.

Drying can account for up to 15% of wholesale costs.

Thar heat pump could allow farmers to sell their crops at a premium through crop drying with Thar Heat Pumps

A farmer can get a 100% premium if the crops are dried. Due to a lack of drying capacity, farmers are forced to sell their crop cheap.

Decarbonization

Energy recuperation allows us to reach COPs (Coefficient of performance) of 7-10, making it a highly energy efficient process. Thar heat pumps are cost-competitive with conventional propane dryers while having far lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Controlled Drying

Heat pump assisted drying provides a controllable drying environment (temperature and humidity) for better products quality at low energy consumption. Slow dried grains can attract premiums due to increased nutritional quality and lower probability of cracking.

Low Operating Cost

Using a Thar heat pump system with potentially a COP of 7-10, would reduce the drying cost as much as 50%.

Real World Example

Tozé, based in Baixo Mondego (Portugal), produces 500 tons of corn per year. The farmer sells half of the corn as fresh, cheap animal feed, mainly due to a lack of drying capacity (he can get up to 100% more for dried grain).

His freshly harvested corn is 28% water, which needs to be at 14.5% or below to store well and fetch optimum prices. In 2023 he spent €0.02/kg of dried corn just on the gas for post harvest dehydration - that’s 8% of the wholesale cost! In years gone by, when fertilizer and labor hasn’t been so costly, drying has accounted for for up to 15% of wholesale costs!

Using a heat pump system with a COP of 7-10 would have HALVED his drying costs, shaving 4% off the cost of production in 2023, or more than 10% in a ‘normal’ year!

Corn and Paddy Fields in Baixo Mondego, Portugal