Four decades of grain drying systems evolution

PEORIA, Ill. — When Stacy Howard started in the business over 40 years ago, the integration of electronic controls and automation, allowing for precise monitoring and adjustments during the grain drying process, was in its infancy.

Fast-forward to today’s advanced technology that includes energy-efficient systems and smart technology that enhances efficiency and reduces grain drying costs.

“In the early days, it was pretty simple technology. You basically set your temperature and your unload rate on your dryers, monitor that on an hourly basis, and someone had to watch the dryer,” Howard, owner of Commercial Ag, said at his booth during the Greater Peoria Farm Show.

“We’ve come from those days to today with nice stainless steel machines that meter the grain out and the technology is just way above that, where you keep your sensors calibrated. The dryer temperature and the unload rate are already calculated into the programming and it does a very fine job.

“We have the technology that really monitors the grain moisture output from the dryers, and it’s very accurate, reliable. With today’s technology, you can call up your dryer on the phone and make adjustments to your dryer. That’s pretty common with the new dryer systems.

“Our dryer system has an inlet moisture sensor that monitors the incoming grain and we have an outlet moisture sensor checking what’s going out of the dryer, and the program will look at the inlet and the outlet and make adjustments. The dryer is divided into segments, and so every time a segment passes, it will recalculate where it needs to be.

“We’ve also gotten into mixed-flow drying, where we don’t have any screens on the dryer, now we’re addressing the quality issues in such a way that the mixed-flow enhances the quality. So, now we’re able to handle some specialty crops much gentler, and that’s really made some recent gains in that area.”

Decades Of Service

Howard started Commercial Ag in 1996. He began his grain dryer career at Meyer Agriproducts, located in Morton, in 1985, building, wiring and servicing Meyer dryers.

In the following years, he worked with Butler Bins and Beard Industries. Commercial Ag has been a Brock dealer since the mid-1990s.

“We primarily sell grain dryers throughout the state of Illinois. We service dryers beyond, just due to some contacts that we’ve had over the years. So, we go into Missouri, parts of Wisconsin, pretty much that kind of area,” Howard said.

Products include grain dryers, grain storage and grain handling equipment, along with service and repairs.

Next Generation

Howard’s son, Parker, joined Commercial Ag full-time in 2022 after graduating from Illinois State University. Matt Dutton started with the company in 2009.

Parker gave further details of the most recent advancements in technology.

“As far as some of that new technologies, as of six years ago the Quantum controller was the main operating system. Now we’re using an Intui-Dry controller, so instead of monitoring the dryer hour by hour, now you can lay in bed, it can be 1 a.m. and your dryer will notify you straight to your phone, and you can really actually take a step back and let the dryer handle itself,” Parker said.

“A lot of the old sensors that Brock used were just flat sensors that the grain passed over and they’ve now upgraded that technology to parallel sensing fields. So, the moisture sensors actually shoot through grain rather just reading the surface of it. You’re able to get a much more accurate readings throughout the grain, rather than just base readings.”