Dos Santos International is pleased to announce their most recent installation handling grain on a floating terminal on the Mississippi River.
The profile for this system is 18.5 meters of lift at a 50 degree incline. It boasts an impressive belt width of 84 inches and a volumetric rate of 2268 t/h (2950cu-m/h). This will elevate mostly hard grains like corn and soybeans, but could include some meals.
The floating transfer station was originally designed for carbon products. To convert the unit to a grain transfer station, additional components needed to be added to meet USDA/FGIS requirements on weights and sampling. Real estate is limited on the barge transfer
unit, and the best technology was needed to bring the product from under a newly added weigh-bin on the deck of the barge back to a certified sampling system mounted 55 feet above deck and only 100 feet away. The owner had a choice between a bucket elevator or the DSI Sandwich Belt. The DSI Sandwich Belt high angle conveyor was selected for its ability to elevate the products being handled over the short distance and because of the gentleness of its conveying.
GENTLENESS OF THE SANDWICH
By the nature of its gentle hugging pressure, the Sandwich Belt conveyor is known to be a gentle system. However, concerns about material degradation had to be addressed at the beginning of the development.
Damage testing was performed on 3 USDA Grade 1 grains. Five one-bushel samples were loaded into oversized burlap sacks from each of a common batch of soybeans, wheat and seed corn. The first bushel of each grain was set aside to serve as the control sample, while the next four bushels were conveyed at 60 degrees, the full length of the 1524mm (60”) belt width demonstration unit, two, four, six and eight times respectively for corresponding conveying distances of 45.7 meters, 91.4 meters, 137.2 meters and 182.9 meters. Samples from each bushel sack were then analyzed at a State of Alabama Department of Agriculture laboratory for the various forms of damage and contamination, and at the Alabama State Seed Laboratory Department of Agriculture and Industries for germination potential. The results showed no damage to any of the three grains tested, as a result of conveying in the high angle conveying unit.
It is with this confidence that several Sandwich Belt high angle conveyors have been successfully installed, including on self unloading ships and ship loaders.
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