World Grain - December 2014 - 62

FEED OPERATIONS

Upgrade ideas for
your feed mill
Making improvements to receiving
and inventory control can pay
major dividends
by Fred Fairchild

Most of the feed manufactured in the world is done in facilities that are relatively old. Although these facilities were, in
most cases, considered state-of-the-art at the time they were
built, they lag behind today's standards. In this article, we are
going to look at some ways to upgrade these facilities. We will
look at them by cost centers in the mill.
RECEIVING
A. SAMPLING
Sampling incoming ingredients has been done manually or
semi-manually for many years by dipping into or probing the
shipment. Test weights, determination of foreign material and
moisture content of the samples were done manually in the
scale area at the time of shipment receipt. Any additional tests
were usually sent to a laboratory for processing. This often
took several hours to get the lab results, which meant that the
ingredients, bulk or bagged, had to be accepted or quarantined
until all of the test results were known.
Today, using NIR (near-infrared) technology, moisture
and test weights of grains and other ingredients can be done
using in-line systems which do the work without a human
having to handle the sample. Additionally, NIR technology
can be calibrated to measure other characteristics of grains
and feed ingredients such as oil content, ash and others.
These determinations can take as little as 10 seconds to get
the needed information. They compare each sample to the
ments. With in-line automatic systems, the chance for human error is all but eliminated.
The results from an automatic in-line sampler and tester can
be tied into an automated control system to give directions to
a human operator or automatically determine the acceptance
of the ingredient and where it should go.
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B. SCALING
Existing scales are often too short to accommodate the longer vehicles in use today. This poses a problem when a truck
of bulk grain or other ingredients must be moved so that not
all wheels are on the scale while weighing or unloading. Toare installed on loadcells and require only a few inches of
height above existing drive levels. These scales are built in
modular sections approximately 20-feet long. Thus a 60-footlong scale would use three sections. The scale can be lengthened in 20-foot modules to 80 feet, 100 feet or longer simply
by adding another section. The loadcells rest on piers at ends
of each scale section. The scale sections with loadcells are
only 12 to13 inches high.
Existing pit-type scales with lever systems can be converted
into pitless scales by installing piers for the new scale modules loadcells location. The new scale can be extended beyond
the existing scale's length by adding piers at each module support location.
C. DUST CONTROL
Dust emissions from a bulk receiving operation can cause
several problems. The most prominent problems are particulate discharges into the atmosphere, potential explosion hazards, employee health problems, and the need for systems to
control them.
Most grain elevators and feed mills are large, tall structures. When surface winds traveling along the ground encounter one of these facilities, the air stream is broken up
and has to go around the structure. The velocity of the air
increases along the sides and top of the facility until the broken airs stream reunites on the opposite side of the structure.
The air encountering a structure will travel the route of least
December 2014 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

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World Grain - December 2014

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