Farmer Comes Up with Solution to Grain Clumping
Published: Friday, February 21, 2020
Guy Mills has had enough when it comes to grain bin deaths and decided to do something about it. The best part about his solution is that it involves an air compressor, a little tinkering and no patents or legal hurdles. He is anxious to share his entrapment remedy that he describes as "light years ahead of its time" with the ag community.
Mills, a 59-year-old, fifth-generation farmer who hails from the heart of Nebraska, grows alfalfa, corn and soybeans and has seen all too often the perils associated with grain bins. Two deaths in his home state occurred just last fall right before harvest.
He describes his solution as "a simple process that requires only a couple hundred dollars at most, three to four minutes to complete, works for any crop and no one goes inside the bin."
His idea surfaced during a spring blizzard of 2019 when snow blew into one of his bins of stored corn. He knew he would have clumping despite removing several loads. Then he ran into an employee working for Trotter Fertilizer Inc. of Arcadia, Neb. who was using a commercial air compressor to remove a plug. Mills made his own version, which worked great, and now wants to share it.
All that is needed is an air compressor, a hose, three-quarter-inch steel pipe (length of bin tube), two elbows, stem (length of auger width), valve, vise grips and claw hooks.
Typically, a farm air compressor runs at about 50 cubic feet per minute (cfm), but plug removal requires a lot more force, usually a commercial machine that runs at 250 cfm. However, the price tag on those run at about $25,000, way too salty for most farmers to afford. Instead, Mills recommends renting one for around $50 per day, since you will only need it for a few minutes, long enough to unplug the bin auger.
In Mills' words, "Remove the auger and insert the three-quarter-inch pipe with one elbow and stem, and blow out the plug by rotating back and forth in the sump. Use vise grips to mark the stem position. The corn is going to fill the sump.
"Then take out the three-quarter-inch pipe and replace the stem with the second elbow. Close the trap and insert the three-quarter-inch pipe with both elbows in the tube. Blow the crop out of the tube and be careful because the force is unreal and corn will shoot 50 feet away. Then open the trap and if corn falls into the sump, the process is complete. If the sump plugs again, repeat the process.
"In extreme cases where crop pillars are present, you can drill a one-inch hole into the side of the bin and use a shorter pipe to reach the intermediate well. In this case, take a three-quarter-inch pipe and flatten one end, then drill a three-eighth-inch hole in the pipe's side. Work this short pipe back and forth over the intermediate well and the crop will flow."
Mills does recommend checking bin manufacturer specifications. He says, "Some bins will tolerate unloading while using an intermediate well, while other bins could be damaged."
Bill Field, Extension safety specialist at Purdue University, agrees wholeheartedly with this point. He emphasized, "You don't want to trade one tragedy for another and with using this kind of pressure, some bins just won't stand up to it."
Field is also a firm believer in prevention. He said that farmers are doing it backwards by putting grain that is not storable into bins. His view is, "The first thing to do to prevent grain bin entrapment is to store good quality grain."
Mills agrees but also expects higher than average storage-quality issues by the spring of 2020 because of the late planting issues that growers over most of the Midwest experienced last year. That translates into a lot of bin trouble with poor quality grain when temperatures start to rise in the spring. With volatile grain prices, farmers will still store poor quality grain.
So, Mills' solution is spot-on for timing. The bottom line is always safety. The pressure from the compressor breaks all the chunks and no one has to go into the bin or crawl over the corn to push anything down. His shop-solution technology takes only a few minutes to build, doesn't require big bucks and removes clogs in just a few minutes. But the biggest payoff is in saving lives.
Although Mills' invention is a solution to grain bin clumping, he and Field both advocate prevention first; it's the best and cheapest. A few of their suggestions:
• Start with hybrid choice, planting date and fertility. Sulfur, phosphorous and nitrogen considerations can give a harder starch.
• Consider your fungicides, even using two separate ones to ensure a harder kernel.
• Make sure combine adjustments are right. A big mistake is a loose, clean grain elevator chain. When a kernel gets caught between the sprocket and chain and then gets cracked, it is more susceptible to spoilage in the bin. Multiply this one kernel by millions and there is a problem.
• Replace axial fans with oversized centrifugal fans for more air volume.
• Consider using a seed cleaner on corn after drying.
• Physically check the stored crop. Do you smell anything, feel heat, wet to the touch, a formed crust? Nothing beats hands-on tabs.
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