TLDR: Iowa State University’s Kent Feed Mill incorporated SonicAire fans as an educational tool demonstrating proper dust mitigation in their state-of-the-art training facility. Professor Dirk Maier explains that while multiple dust control systems exist, SonicAire addresses fugitive dust from hand-mixing and open operations, reducing high-cost labor while teaching students and industry personnel.
Key Points:
• First academic institution combining all feed manufacturing elements
• Facility serves training, research, and commercial production
• Fugitive dust inevitable from bagging and hand-mixing operations
• Labor is high-cost component of feed manufacturing
• Demonstrates comprehensive dust mitigation to industry
Transcript:
My name is Dirk Maier. I’m a professor in agricultural Biosystems Engineering here at Iowa State University. And I was invited to come to Iowa State back in 2015, to start working on this particular project now known as the ISU Kent Feed Mill and Grain Science Complex.
A key proposal of building the facility was, we want to have facilities built in such a way that they are representative of the industry. So that this is really an agro-industrial facility that can be used for the training of students and industry personnel, that we can do research in related to feed and grain and all of that, as well, of course, make feed for the internal leads here at Iowa State as well as work with external customers.
With this facility, we want to make sure that we incorporate dust control systems, cleanup systems, as well as other mitigation systems that allow us to illustrate that dust can be mitigated but also illustrate the concerns and issues with combustible dust as well.
Combustible dust will always be a concern in the industry, we need to be proactive about that. And so we need to make sure that from the design, we built in capabilities to mitigate dust. We’re not just handling material, we’re not just handling grain, we’re not just handling soybean meal, you have air flowing, you have dust that gets entrained in air, we have pneumatic systems, we have steam systems. So there’s a number of components that make up a processing plant that all need to be understood.
From our perspective, there’s always going to be some dust in the air. Anytime you open up a bag, you open up a tote, you do some hand mixing operation. Inevitably, when you’re dealing with these types of ingredients, some will become fugitive. And so by having a system in place that can help to bring that dust to settle more quickly, then it becomes a much better thing for us in terms of housekeeping.
Anytime we have to sweep, that’s labor, right? And so labor is a high-cost component of feed manufacturing. So the more efficient we can make that process, those are tremendous advantages of having a system that helps to mitigate and helps to settle dust.
When you look at this facility, not only do we have mitigation systems like, for example, the type of system that SonicAire has installed throughout the facility, but we also have dust control systems, you know, that are in place, plus we have a central vacuum system throughout the entire facility. So when we do have spills, whether it’s dust, grain, or ingredients, there’s no reason not to clean it up.
I mean, I’ve been at three different universities over the last 30 years, and I would say that at this facility, we’re bringing things together that have never been brought together at any academic institution with regard to feed manufacturing. And so this really opens up teachable and researchable opportunities in a facility like this.
