Why Clean your Grain?

Cleaning your grain beforehand is the best way to ensure that the grain that you store is as safe as it can be. Pockets of foreign material in your silos can cause hot spots or can cause moisture to creep into your grain, and that spells bad news. Even if you don't have your own on farm silos, cleaning your grain can be to your advantage when selling your product, as most buyers will subtract 2% from your tonnage as screenings. Screenings you can sell on your own for about R500 per ton as animal feed, R500 per ton that you could be making instead of someone else.

Should grain be cleaned before storage?

With high quality harvesters grain is often received well cleaned. If in doubt however, it is recommended that fines at least be removed prior to storage.

What happens if I don't clean?

• Impurities concentrates in the centre of the silo, thereby risking downgrading of your grain's quality rating when sold.
• It also hampers drying and aeration as it creates dense pockets.
• It uses unnecessary storage space you have to pay for.
• Impurities can contain harmful & poisonous seeds.

What cleaner should be selected?

The cleaning capacity should be determined by the intake capacity. Rotary cleaners can handle around 40 tons per hour. If intake capacity is larger two or more may be required. Other models can handle 50 - 150 tons at pre-cleaning, half that capacity for final cleaning. Aspiration can be used at higher capacities. This eliminates only the fines however. Zig Zag gravity cleaners can be installed on a downward leg, normally at loading of trucks or unload into a mill etc.. This would also eliminate fines only. Intake augers with perforated bottoms can also eliminate fines at intake.

Cleaners offered by ABC Hansen Africa