World Grain (June 2000 issue)

Typical pollard buildup on steel buckets results in reduced capacity and expensive maintenance.

Aussies Solve Bucket Build-up in Rice Elevators

For years, Ricegrowers Cooperative of Australia, have spent countless hours of regular maintenance time in cleaning the rice pollard (bran from the husk of the rice) from their elevator buckets. Build-up, such as that shown in the photograph, was quite common after just a matter of weeks of operation. In 1998, Ricegrowers set out to find a solution by setting up a test elevator at their Yenda facility in New South Wales. The elevator was installed with eight different elevator buckets from four different manufacturers. Conveyor Products, Ltd. of Brisbane, Queensland, the importer and stocking distributor of Tapco Inc. elevator buckets, provided test buckets and engineering expertise for this problem-solving exercise.

Tapco CC-HD urethane buckets after six months operation. The slick surface rejects any buildup.

Nonmetallic buckets were well represented in both polyethylene and urethane from Tapco and two other brands. The balance of buckets was made up of fabricated and stainless steel. To ensure a fair test, ten buckets of each type were installed. The elevator was run for several months with inspections made at regular intervals. On each occasion, the buckets were cleaned to enable the build-up to be recorded accurately. After six months of testing, the bucket with by far the least amount of build-up was the Tapco Style CC-HD urethane. As a result, Ricegrowers have now standardized on the Tapco elevator bucket and are in the process of installing them on a number of their elevators at various sites.

According to Mr. Wayne Thompson (Engineering Contract Officer), the premium that they pay for urethane over other plastics, such as polyethylene, is well justified by the reduced hours by their maintenance personnel.

Even the underside was clean - except for a small amount of buildup attracted to the Tapco brand molded into the urethane.

A similar test, set up on one of their paddy rice elevators, also showed the strength and tear resistance superiority of the Tapco urethane bucket against other urethane elevator buckets tested in this aggressive application. As a result, Ricegrowers have installed 1,100 of the 13x7 CC-HD urethane buckets at their Deniliquin facility.

Since the tests, Ricegrowers have installed an additional 6,000 buckets beyond the original 1,100. Ricegrowers now plans to convert all of their facility elevators to Tapco urethane buckets.

by Chris Bell
Managing Director - PitTop Conveyor Products Pty. Ltd.
Phone: +61-7-3272-0000
Fax: +61-7-3272-2233
Mail: PitTop Conveyor Products Pty. Ltd.
Unit 8, 47 Overlord Place
Acacia Ridge, Queensland 4110
Australia
Email: brisbane@pittop.com.au
Website: www.pittop.com.au