Pneumatic Conveying Elbows for the Grain Industry

A pneumatic conveying system is a quick, efficient, flexible and convenient way to move grain, as long as your system is well-maintained. Using the right pneumatic conveying elbows for your system helps to maintain the quality of your grain and avoid friability, reduce the risk of contamination, lessen the impact of abrasion and avoid the back-up of grain in the system. At Progressive Products, we aim to solve these challenges, increasing your efficiency and saving you time and money.

Grain Industry Pneumatic Conveying Elbows

Grain Industry Companies Who Use
Pneumatic Conveying Systems

A variety of companies in the grain industry use pneumatic conveying systems in the movement and manufacture of their products. Typical companies include:

Farmers and agricultural co-operatives • Grain processors • Oil seed plants • Grain mills

• Feed plants – where minerals can be added in during the feed manufacturing process, which uses a variety of grains that humans don’t normally eat

Search pneumatic conveying components that perform.

What Types of Materials Are Used in Grain Industry Pneumatic Conveying?

The types of grain being conveyed include corn, wheat, rice, whole soybeans (direct from the field), soybean hulls (the outer coating of soybeans once they have been dehulled), bare soybeans, sesame seeds, sugar cane, and animal feed such as sorghum.

There is also a clear distinction between pneumatic conveying needs for ‘dirty side’ material – grain which is fresh out of the earth – and ‘clean side’ material – grain which is being conveyed during the manufacturing process itself.

Gravity Conveying in the Grain Industry

The grain industry uses gravity conveying as well as pneumatic conveying. Grain is commonly stored up high, meaning that it is moved by shooting down from pipes, fed by gravity. This method of conveying still has similar sliding abrasion challenges, but this effect is slightly lessened as the grain isn’t under the same pressure as with pneumatic conveying. In gravity conveying, elbow wear is more typically seen in the silos used to convey grain between trucks, silos, and gravity bins.

Challenges the Grain Industry Has with Pneumatic Conveying Elbows

Abrasive Wear

One of the main challenges for the grain industry is abrasive wear on pneumatic conveying elbows. Changing elbows leads to system downtime, cost and sometimes unnecessary use of resources.

Friability, Packing & Rotting

Grain companies generally want to keep grains whole and avoid friability, i.e. the tear, breaking and dusting of the grain. Not only is this better for the end product, but it helps to avoid the packing of material in the system, and in turn the rotting of packed material.

Contamination

A final challenge for the grain industry is how to avoid contamination of grain, especially when the end product is food-grade standard.

How Progressive Products Solves Grain Industry’s Pneumatic Conveying Elbow Challenges

With Progressive Products, your challenges with pneumatic conveying elbows have various solutions. We want you to have the elbows that are right for your needs, and we’ll talk through your requirements with you in detail before we make a recommendation.

As a general rule, long radius elbows are better for the grain industry because there’s less impact than there is from using a short radius elbow. This is because the angles of long radius elbows are smoother and more elongated so the grain can follow the path of least resistance and won’t break up as much.

Ceram-Back® and Flat-back elbows are normally the best elbows to use for pneumatic conveying in the grain industry. It’s best to avoid hollow-back elbows as they are designed to pack bulk materials in the back, and replaceable-back elbows as you do not want material to get lodged, either of which could cause mold or rotting of grains.

Additionally, we can provide abrasion-resistant, robust yet light coatings and tile-linings to help protect the chutes and diverters that are commonly found in grain handling. These coatings and tile-linings can be custom engineered to precision tolerances and will extend the life of your equipment, reduce maintenance costs, and minimize downtime.

With Progressive Product elbows you can save time and money because we’ll help you get the proper application with the proper solution for best results.

Increasing the Efficiency of Your
Pneumatic Conveying Elbows

What Progressive Products Does Differently

Every time we speak to a new customer, we take them through an in-depth consultation process. We’ll ask questions about your current system, your needs, how long the elbows you currently use last, what concerns you have, what you’re manufacturing, how much you’re conveying, size of grain, psi – and much more. We’ll also look for ways to increase efficiencies in your system and establish what contamination challenges you may have.

By going into this level of detail, we can make targeted recommendations for the elbows that are right for you – in the grain industry, it’s especially important that we get the radius size right. We can provide information and suggestions for specialty elbows, and with a thorough understanding of your requirements, we can save you unplanned system downtime, cost and resources.

Tell us your challenges. We’ll help you find solutions.