CIRCULATING MEAL BIN
A & S THAI WORKS CO., LTD
Description about meal bins and silos.
Finished animal feed meals normally exits from a hammer mill and can be stored as follows:
- Loading straight into “big bags” or “jumbo bags” with sizes normally 500 or 1000 kg and stored in a ware house, or loading directly into 20 foot containers Telescopic type 20 foot Container Loader is offered by ASTW.
Sometimes this type of outlet is connected to a small to medium buffer hopper with volume 1 to 3 tons and a weighing machine.
- Loading into meal bins or silos for short or long time storage.
Short term storage lasting 2-4 days when meal will be picked up by trucks, ships, or stored in other ways such as 20 foot containers (load 18-20 tons)
Long term storage 1 to 3 weeks or more when there is longer time between pickups. Very large storage bins are often called silos and are circular.
Maximum practical size for square or rectangular bins is about 200 m3 or 120 tons and such complete units are offered by ASTW.
Larger circular silos store much more material like grain or meals and are offered by specialized silo makers.
Meal bins must have a vertical or zig-zag screw conveyor or bucket elevator that transport the meal to the top and circulates the meal from bottom outlet to top of the bin to avoid self-heating and forming of bridges and hard blocks of meal that are difficult to discharge. These meal bins often circulate the meal 24 hours per day to avoid self-heating and bridging.
ASTW offers such circulating bins and vertical screw conveyors.
Some bins have blowers that create a slow air stream going through the top of the bin for cooling purpose.
Outfeed systems from large bins and silos is a science in itself and must be made by either very heavy duty screw conveyors or specialized equipment such as vibrating bottom, cannon blow nozzles with compressed air or conical bottom using center mounted peripherical circulating screw conveyor
