If you eat a bowl of cereal or piece of toast for breakfast, you are eating food made from grains. Well, they originated from farms all across the world.
Each year, farmers harvest millions of tons of grain and some of the grains are sold to food processors while others are stored for future use in grain silos. How do grain silos work? Overview Grain silos are simply large structures used to store grain to be sold or used at a future date. Materials other than grain, like coal, can also be stored in them. The material stored inside silos is called silage. Different types of silos include: tower silos, horizontal bunker silos, and horizontal trench silos.
Tower silos are made from a variety of materials including wood and concrete and many different types are available. The cost varies depending on the material and height needed. One type of tower silo is the concrete stave silo.
These silos consist of layers of concrete blocks that are layered together in circles and stacked on top of each other. Since grain from the upper layers exert a great deal of pressure, additional thinner layers are needed at the bottom of the silo. Storing food products such as grain always introduces concerns about food spoilage due to exposure to moisture.
As a result, another type of grain elevator was developed called the low-oxygen silo. These silos are designed to keep constant pressure and air flow.
These two structures also look very different. Grain bins are metal cylinders with peaked metal roofs that typically have staircases or ladders on the outside.
They are vented, silver, corrugated steel structures fatter in diameter than silos and have varying heights. Silos are also cylindrical, but are commonly made of concrete, bricks, metal, and sometimes even wood. Their tops are usually dome-shaped, and they tend to be narrower and taller than grain bins. Grain bins are commonly found on grain farms or at elevators, whereas silos are at farms with cattle.
Next time you spot these structures, will you know the difference? They can be distinguished by both size and shape as well as what they are used to store. A silo is typically used for storing grain or silage while a bin usually holds dry matter. I always drive by a farming community that has both grain bins and silos. Now I know that silos are the tall skinny structures, and grain bins are the corrugated steel structures that store corn and soybeans. Other than corn and soybeans, what other dried commodities are typically stored in grain bins?
It seems like they could be used to be stored a lot more types of grains and dried goods. Thanks for the information! Thanks for clarifying the difference between silos and bins. I grew up in rural farming communities but always thought that all of the storage facilities were silos. If I am understanding correctly, silos are used to store wet fodder while bins are for the dry stuff?
If grain bins are different because of the construction materials being made of corrugated steel …what were they made of back before that material was readily available? I will make sure to look more into this as I look for ways to store grain. Thank you for the clarification and the time you took to write this. I would imagine the views from the top of these taller silos is amazing.
Much more rewarding than that of say a 27 story building in a city. Is it true that silos are used less frequently today, than say, 30 years ago? As I recall, most silos were used for the feeding of a personal family farm herd, while granaries — grain bins — can facilitate feeding many more animals and in the making of other bi-products, as well as exported grain to feed overseas livestock, am I correct in thinking this?
This is all very interesting to me. Thank you. Thanks for explaining that while grain bins store things like corn and soybeans, silos typically store cattle food like grass. Silos are used in agriculture to store grain, powders, fermented feed known as silage and animal slurry. Silos are used by other industries for bulk storage of coal, cement, sand, woodchips, metal waste, food products and sawdust.
Silos range in height from around 10m to 90m with a capacity of 20 to 80 tons. Agricultural silos are designed to store silages and high-moisture grains that are used to feed livestock. They are a common fixture in the farming industry and the growth in population and production leads to an increase in demand for metal silos and grain storage solutions. The primary function of a silo is to provide protection from the elements to increase the storage life of the grains.
Silos are also a crucial element in the overall operation of grain storage. Additionally, silos support monitoring equipment used to track both the temperature and quality of the grains.
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