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Trend Forecasting With Technical Analysis
Trend Forecasting With Technical Analysis
2006
ANIMAL FEED
SOLUTIONS FOR THE GLOBAL FEED INDUSTRY
WELCOME
Pellet quality and storage solutions feature in this month’s FTU
A comparison of hermetic storage in flexible silos versus rigid metal or concrete silos © Linx Publishing LLC 2006.
All rights reserved.
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RUNNING HEAD
SALES OFFICES
Andrew West
monly used are described by Matthias Franke and P.O. Box 411
Andreas Rey. Redhill, Surrey, RH1 6WE, U.K.
Phone: +44 (0) 1737 763501
Good pellet-to-pellet uniformity is critical and if Skype: andywest1204
you are one of the many feed producers who think Fax: +44 (0) 1737 762996
that piece-to-piece variations are not important Email: info@linxpublishing.com
Or: andrew.west733@ntlworld.com
because the product will equilibrate in the bins or
after packaging, think again, says Paul McKeithan, John Brown
48 Beacon View
in his article "The truth about moisture uniformity Marple, Cheshire SK6 6PX U.K.
and equilibration”. Phone +44 (0) 161 427 2402
Tropical climates present particular problems for Skype: jcbconsult
Fax: +44 (0) 161 427 2402
the long-term storage of feeds and feed ingredi- Email: info@linxpublishing.com
ents. Even when properly dried, commodities can Or: jc.brown2@ntlworld.com
suffer from condensation and contamination from
both insects and mycotoxins. Read how hermeti-
cally sealed flexible silos compare as an alterna- DESIGN AND PRODUCTION
Julia Nixon
tive to traditional metal and concrete silos in tropi- Email: julianixon@xtra.co.nz
cal applications.
We wind up this issue with a look around what is
happening in our industry: news briefs, jobs avail- EDITORIAL & ACCOUNTS
able, upcoming events and more. Suzi Fraser Dominy
And now you can keep up-to-date with our pick of 4192-4 Keanu St
Honolulu, Hawaii, 96816, USA.
the feed news in our feed blog, Feedback. Skype: suzidominy
Updated regularly, Feedback brings you the most Email: info@linxpublishing.com
Or: linx@hawaii.rr.com
interesting feed-related stories in the news.
Bookmark it now:
http://feedlink.blogspot.com/
Bühler AG
CH-9240 Uzwil, Switzerland
T +41 71 955 11 11
F +41 71 955 28 96
www.buhlergroup.com
PELLET QUALITY
I
nvestigations conducted by Dr. K.C. This enables this air to absorb more humid-
Behnke, Kansas State University, ity, and the pellets are dried. This shows
show individual parameters and their that a high air volume is not necessarily
weighting with regard to the pellet required to achieve a good drying result. A
quality. The influencing factors shown in the large air volume means high air flow veloc-
diagram are considered in more detail ity and therefore a shorter period of contact
below, as well as elements that usually with the product. The air is heated to a
receive inadequate attention. lesser degree and can therefore absorb less
humidity, which in turn degrades the drying
15% 5% cooling result. For this reason, the air volume must
combination be optimized relative to the required values.
die/rollers
This is done by means of the butterfly valve
on the cooling air fan.
[ ]
40% raw
material total cooling air m 3 / min
Specific air volume =
20%
conditioning
material throughput [t / h ]
Cooling
The pellets are additionally dried during the
cooling phase.
The temperature of the air flowing through
Retention
the cooler is increased by the hot pellets.
5 10 15
time [min]
PELLET QUALITY
Handling
During transportation and handling of pel-
lets, attention must focus on minimizing
production of fines. As a result, agitation of
the pellets must be minimized. At the same
time, care must be taken to ensure move-
ments that are easy on the pellets: low
conveying velocities, low friction, and low
falling heights. The term pellet quality in
this case means hardness and stability. Chain conveyors for sanitation and gentle conveying
FeedLink
Quality feed and grain equipment
from the world’s finest suppliers
PELLET QUALITY
Two basically different measurement methods exist to assess and describe the durability and
stability of pellets:
One is “hardness” testing which measures the force required to destroy the pellet.
The unit of measurement is typically [N] or [kP].
The other measurement method is the so-called “durability” test. It uses test devices to inves-
tigate the actual loads acting during transportation and handling on the pellets, simulating
them and measuring the weight (percentage) of fines produced or the weight of the pellets left
over.
Measurement of hardness
Note that during a hardness measurement, several samples must be drawn and analyzed. This
is because the hardness of a given pellet is always measured at one single point, which may
distort the test results if an insufficient quantity of pellets are tested. A good sample size would
be 12 to 20 pellets.
Holmen
In this measurement method, 100 grams of dust-free pellets
(mesh width 0.8 x diameter of the pellets) are cycled in a pneumatic
circulation system during 1 to 2 minutes.
After the fines have been removed by sieving, the remaining pellets
are
weighed. Then the durability factor is determined, i.e. the weight of the
pellets is stated relative to the total weight as a percentage (DLU).
“Pfost” method
In this measurement method, 500 grams of pellets each are filled into the two plastic
containers. After they have been rotated 500 times, the pellets are removed again,
sieved, and weighed.
The measure of the pellet quality is either the so-called
Granulation / grinding
Finely milled formulated feed has positive
effects on the pellet quality. In practice,
however, some restrictions exist such as
the high energy requirement of the hammer
mill, the limited throughput capacity of the
hammer mill, and problems with the flow of
product in the presence of an excessively
fine particle size. As a result, a typical com-
pound feed will have an average particle
size of approximately 0.5 to 0.7 mm, with
no particles > 1 – 1.5 mm. Otherwise, such
a particle will act as a kind of predeter-
mined breaking point in the pellet.
Conditioning
Today, the conditioning process is ex-
pected to meet new requirements. The
main reasons for conditioning used to be Flexible conditioning; separated mixing and time
controlled retention process
the production of hard pellets, e.g.
PELLET QUALITY
• creation of liquids bridges the longer normally the active die hole
• plasticizing of individual particles length selected. This applies basically wher-
• increase in throughput rates due ever the pellet quality cannot be further im-
to lubrication effects proved by selecting a higher conditioning
• reduction of pelleting costs temperature. This is especially true with
through lower energy consump- products with an elevated fat content.
tion
• increase in the service lives of Raw material
dies and rollers As described above, the blending of the raw
• partial gelatinization of starch materials has the greatest impact on the
pelleting process. Thus, for example, by
Today, special attention is paid to the re- adding pelleting aids with or without nutri-
duction of germ and bacteria counts. Since tional substances, adhesive forces can be
the need to reduce the germ count and the created inside the pellet or, by adding fat,
requirement to achieve a high pellet hard- the pellet mill throughput can be increased
ness clash to a certain extent, the condi- and the energy requirement reduced.
tioning process must be of very flexible de-
sign. This is achieved by splitting the condi- About the authors:
tioning process into a mixing phase and a Matthias Franke is Product Manager and An-
time-controlled retention process. dreas Rey, Marketing Services, Buhler AG,
Uzwil, Switzerland. For more information
Die / rollers contact:
The rollers in conjunction with the die are andreas.rey@buhlergroup.com or
the most important elements of a pellet matthias.franke@buhlergroup.com
mill.
Visit the Buhler website
It is enormously important to ensure the
most uniform spreading of the mash across See Buhler on FeedLink
the entire width of the die and the rollers in
a pellet mill in order to achieve the most
consistent pelleting conditions possible.
The higher the pellet quality requirements,
Pellet mill
CPM has you
Covered
Working together, California Pellet Mill, Roskamp Champion and
Beta Raven open a world of opportunity for your operation.
So whether you use all of CPM’s brands or simply a single product, your
forecast is bright.
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MOISTURE UNIFORMITY AND EQUILIBRATION
E
veryone knows that feed moisture in your packaged product due to wet pel-
uniformity is important and most lets, or result in wasted money due to ex-
plants monitor the uniformity of the cessive energy used to over-dry some pel-
product. However, not everyone lets, but you may be overlooking the big-
understands how critical it is to have a good gest cost of non-uniform drying.
pellet to pellet uniformity. Drying your product non-uniformly is like
Here are a number of reasons why you throwing product out the exhaust stack.
need to take a closer look at your product This is because your feed product is sold
moisture uniformity. based on the weight of product shipped out
your door. One of the key specifications for
Product Quality feed products is the moisture content.
Product stability is one of the main reasons Suppose that your finished feed cannot con-
you monitor moisture content. You are ac- tain over 10% moisture, and that your drier
tually targeting a certain water activity in is only drying the product to +/- 3% mois-
the product. Water activity is defined as “a ture on a wet weight basis. This means
measure of the energy status of the water that you must dry your product to 7% mois-
in a system or the degree to which water is ture on average in order to ensure that no
“bound” and, hence, its availability to act as product is over the 10% moisture maxi-
a solvent and participate in chemical and mum. The result is that you are sending
biochemical reactions and growth of micro- 3% less product to packaging than if you
organisms.” 1 It is important to monitor this dried to only 10% moisture. This lost pro-
water activity to know that the feed is at a duction is going out the drier exhaust stack
stable state and, therefore, does not have in the form of water vapor. If your drier
enough free water to create microbial could be made to dry more uniformly, you
growth. could raise your discharge moisture and get
However, it is not as practical to measure more production out of your dry feed line
water activity in a production environment with no additional cost or ingredients.
so moisture content is generally measured The value of this lost production can be
instead. For a given product moisture con- staggering. Consider a 15 ton/hour dry feed
tent can be related to the water activity. line that is producing feed overdried by just
With this knowledge you can target feed 3% moisture. If the line runs 24 hours per
moisture that is safe from mold and an ac- day for 350 days a year, the lost production
ceptable quality for your customers. is:
Equilibration Curve
1 kg wet with 1 kg dry feed mixed in plastic lined bag
14.00
13.00
12.00
Moisture (%wwb)
11.00
10.00 Dry Product (%wwb)
9.00 Wet Product (% wwb)
8.00 Average (%wwb)
7.00
6.00
5.00
4.00
0 2 4 6 8
Time (hours)
This higher moisture content could cause much easier due to better access and is
mold growth yielding product unacceptable continuous rather than a semi-continuous
to your customers. mode of operation.
So with this in mind, when you are per-
forming a moisture tolerance investigation, Collecting product moisture samples
you should check your product after the from a conveyor drier
drying stage and prior to any mixing. On a conveyor drier, you will want to inves-
Because this can be difficult, let’s review tigate cross machine moisture variations, as
some important considerations. well as transient moisture variations in
The vast majority of extruded feed driers time.
are horizontal conveyor driers. However, a You may also want to take samples from
few producers have installed some vertical the first or second bed in a two or three
semi-continuous batch driers on extruded pass drier to help in pinpointing the source
feed lines. of the variations.
Different methods are required. Typically, Figure 1 on the next page shows where to
taking samples from a conveyor drier is take the discharge samples.
MOISTURE UNIFORMITY AND EQUILIBRATION
Product Feed
Discharge Sample
Collecting product moisture samples
from a vertical drier
Figure 1: Side view of a two-pass Horizontal Taking samples from a vertical drier is
Convection Conveyor drier showing the sample
considerably more difficult since you have
location
very limited access to the decks of prod-
uct. Also, you will need to take more
The samples should be taken as a matrix samples in a “set” of samples since the
in the vertical plane of the product prior vertical drier is a batch operation rather
to discharge from the bed. The bed of than a true continuous operation.
product can typically be accessed through This means that you are now looking to
the end doors of the drier. measure moisture variations across the
whole deck of product rather than just
across the bed as in a conveyor drier.
Unfortunately, these difficulties make it
very challenging to take a proper set of
samples from the vertical drier.
You will need to find a safe and effective
way to collect these samples as different
vertical configurations present different
challenges to access the product prior to
mixing.
You should remember that a moisture
gradient can exist through the depth of
the product as well as across the width
and length of the deck.
Remember that you should not take sam-
ples at the discharge because this will be
Figure 2 shows the discharge product sample a mixed sample that can mask the piece
matrix. to piece moisture content.
MOISTURE UNIFORMITY AND EQUILIBRATION
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www.extru-techinc.com
Background information
C
ondensation in metal or concrete erates more heat and thus creates favorable
silos is the result of heat build-up at conditions for further insect and mold devel-
the headspace of the grain bulk, opment.
followed by cooling. This is caused both
by direct sunshine on the roof and the
walls of the silo and by high prevailing
daytime temperatures. Warm air has the
capacity to hold more water than cold air
and, aided by convection currents, warm
headspace air in the silo absorbs moisture
from the grain by adjusting its relative
humidity to that of the grain. This mois-
ture is transferred to the headspace air
from the grain inside the silo through dif-
fusion and “convection currents”.
(Remember the principle: warm air rises,
cold air goes down!)
At night the ambient temperature drops
and so does the temperature in the head-
space of the silo. As the temperature goes
down, the air in the headspace which has
become over-saturated with moisture
then releases its excess of water. This is
known as condensation drops or
“sweating.”
These drops settle at the roof of the silo
and will eventually drip onto the top sur-
face layer of the grain bulk and along the
walls. Wet grain at the top of the bulk
forms, a phenomenon called “caking.” The
grain becomes moldy and black, heats up
during the warm day and, if not removed
in time, can ignite due to spontaneous
combustion. By contrast, a Cocoon is
Figure 3: Hot spot and its impact on grain
GRAIN STORAGE
easily develop.
Insect population
Density of
M
the silo) and each m3 air releases about 33
g of water for each day/night cycle. any traditional metal and concrete
Although day and nighttime temperature silo complexes exist in the tropics,
differences are very limited in tropical often built without sufficient under-
climates (usually not more than 5oC), the standing of the unique problems of storing
problem arises due to heating of air at the grain in that environment. As a result, in
headspace of the silo. The exposed metal some countries such as Nigeria, millions of
roof temperature can easily heat up to 60 dollars worth of storage capacity is standing
o
C or more, aggravating the condensation. idle.
Thus, a commodity stored at 14% MC (at In the Philippines, a number of silo complexes
70% RH) in a silo in the tropics is exposed acquired for storing paddy are unused due to
the problems mentioned above. For example,
GRAIN STORAGE
feed millers have had severe problems of 3) using either vacuum or purging with CO2
caking of corn in their silos, requiring them or Nitrogen for rapid fumigation of high-
to clean the silo walls at great expense. value commodities as different as figs and
Although it is possible to hermetically seal historically important museum pieces.
conventional silos, the expenses involved
are substantial. Silo roofs have to be insu-
lated and walls may have to be painted
white to reduce heat absorption. A solution
is needed to cope with air expansion due to
fluctuation of temperature.
Hermetic storage in flexible liners called Co-
coons* such as those shown in Figure 6 be-
low, offers an alternative solution.
VICTAM
International2007
THE WORLD’S PREMIER EVENT FOR SUPPLIERS TO THE ANIMAL &
VICTAM INTERNATIONAL 2007 will bring together exhibitors and visitors from all over the world who are
concerned with animal feed technology, animal feed additives, aqua feed technology and ingredients, petfoods,
specialist animal feeds, raw materials, flour milling, grain processing, storage, handling & transportation,
explosion prevention and biomass technology.
On the Aquafeed.com
European feed federation, stressing that it was still very JOB BOARD
FEFAC, members reported difficult to provide accurate
a total production of 143.6 estimates due to the very
million tonnes (mt) of com- volatile market situation. Animal Feed Mill Manager -
pound feed in 2005, repre- France, Italy and Hungary Oman
senting a slight decrease of may see the strongest nega- Qualified and experienced man-
0.6% in total compound feed tive impact given the relative ager for a 960 tonne/day Buhler
production compared to the importance of poultry feed animal feedmill. The successful
previous year. production in these countries applicant will be responsible for
The regression spanned and persisting negative con- overall production and manage-
ment of the mill. View/Reply
evenly over all feed catego- sumer sentiment towards
ries with the exception of poultry products. Director, Aquatic Feeds and
milk replacers (+1.3%). Since compensation effects Nutrition Department Oceanic
Among the large feed pro- between meat categories will Institute - Hawaii
ducing countries Poland be very limited, total EU The Department’s objective is to
(+7.9%), Spain (+3.7%) and compound feed output may support cost effective and sus-
the Netherlands (+2.5%) therefore shrink by up to 3 – tainable aquaculture technology
booked significant production 4% until the end of the year. development by optimizing feeds
gains whereas Belgium (- FEFAC, the European Com- and culture management prac-
tices in tropical and subtropical
5.6%), Hungary (-4.2%) and pound Feed Manufacturers
environments. View/Reply
the UK (-3.2%) faced impor- Federation (FEFAC), repre-
tant losses. Spain has over- sents 22 national Associa- Logistics Manager - N. Africa
taken Germany as the sec- tions in 21 EU Member Logistics Manager to manage a
ond largest compound feed States as well as Associations leading North African based food
producing country in the EU. from Switzerland, Norway groups raw material and finished
and Turkey with observer/ products transportation. This is a
Impact of bird flu associate member status. senior position with an excellent
The media coverage on Avian The European compound tax free ex-pat package.
View/Reply
Influenza led to an important feed industry produces more
slowdown of poultry produc- than 140 mt of compound Scientist Fish Nutrition -
tion towards the end of feed employing over 100,000 France
2005. FEFAC industry experts persons on more than 4,000 DSM Nutritional Products invites
estimated the potential AI production sites. applications for a position of
knock-on effects for the cal- Scientist in Fish Nutrition and
endar year 2006 a total re- Download the tables of Health Research View/Reply
duction of 2.5 – 5 mt of the compound feed production in
total EU poultry feed output, FEFAC member countries