World Grain - December 2006 - 44
feedoperations
is usually only one knife post or simple
breaker bar used.
COOLING
There are three main types of coolers
operating in mills today:
* the vertical or tower cooler, often
fitted with an integral sieve at the discharge;
* the horizontal cooler, usually with
multiple decks where feed is moved
along by chains;
* the box or counterflow cooler,
which seems to be the version of choice
for new installations, principally because it is more energy efficient than the
other two.
The vertical cooler is problematical when filling and emptying, as the
air used for cooling takes the least line
slow-moving chain that requires plenty
of maintenance and can be extremely
difficult to extract from a confined space
if it breaks and wraps itself around the
end shafts.
In mills, however, where cooler fines
can be contained, this type of cooler can
be utilized for relatively quick changeovers from one diet to another by leav-
ing a noticeable gap on the cooler bed
and then switching finished-product bin
routes accordingly at the right time.
The final and most widely adopted
choice of cooler is the box cooler where
product enters the top of the cooler
and cascades down through the various chambers, with the product being
moved by either a stirrer arm or a chain
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4' ,,
The horizontal cooler gen
erally has much greater
capacity than the vertical
cooler and can be extended through the side of a
building.
of resistance. While product may be in
the bottom half, the air will be drawn
through the top section, and the cooler
does not really start to work until fully
charged.
However, for mills, where space is at
a premium, the horizontal cooler may be
the preferred choice.
The horizontal cooler generally has
much greater capacity than the vertical
cooler and can be extended through the
side of a building. Since the machine
is invariably multi-decked, the product
being cooled is usually conveyed away
from the entry point and brought back
again on the lower deck to the exit point
positioned below the inlet.
These machines were extremely popular in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s,
and there are still many of them in operation today. One of their drawbacks is the
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