Moving Grain With Pneumatic Systems

Moving grain around a farming operation can be timeconsuming, energy-intensive and even risky. Some farmers are tackling these problems by installing pneumatic grain handling systems.

Using air pressure to move grain from a drying system, central distribution hopper or a cleaning point can be more efficient than using traditional augers. It can also cut back on damage to valuable commodities.

Doug Termeer, Walinga sales representative for Saskatchewan and Manitoba, says some of his clients have 20 to 30 bins in their Walinga Ultra-Veyor systems.

With the air blower, airlock and piping all on one system, pressure is consistent throughout the movement process. Farmers have flexibility to move grain wherever it needs to go without moving heavy equipment. While equipment, like augers, drag conveyors and elevators, can easily be moved around, a permanently installed pneumatic system saves time and energy.

During busy times, like harvest, moving the auger from one bin to the next can take a lot of time. This system eliminates that problem. “If you want to switch from one bin to the next,” Termeer says, “we have a distributor that we sell with it. It’s a matter of pulling one lever and turning it and locking it into place. It takes about 30 seconds to change which bin you’re blowing to.”

The new pneumatic

Pneumatic systems have come a long way in the past decade. In the past, Termeer says, farmers would set the airflow rates fast enough to move the heaviest products the farthest distance without plugging the system. This added wear to the system and some damage to lighter products travelling shorter distances. Walinga worked with a farmer customer to develop its Smart-Flo system to address this problem.

The Smart-Flo system will automatically adjust the airflow to what it needs to be. “If you have too much air and not enough grain,” Termeer says, “you’re going to get premature wear on your pipe, and you’re going to damage some of the product. On the reverse side, if you have too much grain and not enough air, it plugs.”

For instance, when really wet grain means more drying time and a lot less grain entering the tubing, the system knows that less airspeed is required to get the grain through the system. For farmers, that means higher grain quality and a longerlasting system.

“If you’re blowing light products, like oats, to a bin that’s 100 feet away, you’re going to need a lot less air than if you’re moving that same product 400 feet, so it’s going to automatically adjust that.”

These adjustments are not something that can be done with an auger, especially at the tail end of moving grain when there isn’t a lot of product being pushed through. Termeer says that is when the system is going to grind away at the product and cause damage.

Safety is another benefit that comes with pneumatic movement. When grain is moved with air rather than a conveyance, there are fewer moving parts for farmers to worry about, meaning less concerns about getting caught in a scary situation.

Termeer is also proud of the flexibility of the system. Grain can travel on its own for as long as it needs with the right length of tubing, again without getting tractors out to pull augers, elevators or other conveyances into place. There’s no easier way for grain to cover these long distances, he says.

“We have systems that go 300, 400, 500 feet horizontal before they go up into the bin,” Termeer says. Some customers run pipes under or over driveways. “If the bins aren’t in a perfect line, it doesn’t matter. If one bin is 48-footdiameter, the next bins are 30-foot diameter and the heights are all different; it doesn’t matter.”

While the pneumatic system is gentler on grain, it can only move between 200 to 2,000 bushels an hour, while an auger right off the truck can move closer to 20,000 bushels an hour. But despite the unload delay, farmers still find value in the ability to drop grain at a central distribution point and let the pneumatic system take over.

Depending on grain types and volumes, there are different