Cereals Intake & Transfer System

Overview:

To design, manufacture, manage and install an up rated dust free bulk intake, handling oats at 60 TPH with a density of 460 kg/m³, and to transfer oats from the material storage silos to a weigher in the process area at 10 TPH.

Activity:

The new intake system was sited at the rear of the plant adjacent to the existing 14 x 300 tonne storage silos, with a new tipping booth with plastic curtains and an electric roller shutter door, complete with automatic lorry detection to operate the dust extraction system.

When a lorry was detected approaching the tipping booth (by a proximity sensor), two aspiration fans automatically started removing airborne dust from the tipping point. These aspirators exhaust via one exhaust duct to a filter. When the proximity switch detected the lorry leaving the booth the filters ran their cleaning cycle before stopping until another lorry arrived. The dust from the filters was conveyed away.

A concrete “buffer” protected the intake from the lorries through a new conveying system through a stainless steel drawer magnet. This enabled bar magnets to be withdrawn easily for cleaning. The new conveying route with ferrous metal protection fed a new bucket elevator that elevated the oats to a rubble separator.

The rubble separator was housed in a steel enclosure to protect it from elements, and a gantry around it to allow for the safe changing of screens. The rubble separator removed straw and oversized objects from the incoming oats, and discharged the waste material into a bulk bag. The cleaned oats discharged into an existing bucket elevator. Over spill switches were fitted to the two intake conveyors, whilst material present probes are fitted at the discharge of both elevators and at the waste chute of the rubble separator. The bucket elevators were fitted with protection against belt slip, overheated bearings and mis-aligned belt.

All the conveyors were supported off the floor and manufactured from galvanised mild steel.