Rubber latex after treatment needs to be dried, either in sun or through smoke houses. Mitraniketan Core Support team has developed a fuel efficient rubber sheet drier affordable to small farmers, in cooperation and consultation with IISc, Banglore.
Smoke houses are owned by large farmers, and they consume large quantities of firewood. The small/medium farmers usually rely on sun drying or hang the sheets over their firewood stoves for drying them, as smoke houses are not affordable to them. The traditional smoke houses uses large quantities of fire wood, and they are not fuel efficient as the sheets take four days to get dried.
Mitraniketan CORE Support team developed a new small size drier which helps the farmers to dry rubber sheets in 36hr while the older smoke houses need around four days. The drier consist of:
· A drying chamber is of size 1 m x 0.8 m x 1.2 m (L x B x H). The top having hot air vents, and bottom opening to the atmosphere. The outer wall is made of suitable insulating material.
· A combustion chamber, where the fuel (wood) is burned.
· Hot air duct, leading from the combustion chamber, opening to the top drying chamber.
In this system the air duct is heated due to the hot air from the combustion chamber. The heat liberated from the hot air duct causes evaporation of Moisture in the sheets. As the air absorbs more moisture the air tends to flow down and out of the drying chamber through the bottom, due to increase in density with decrease in temperature.
Current Status: Currently linking with rubber cooperative societies for advertisement and marketing.