Company Finds Cartridge Dust Collectors to be the Gold Standard

An international seed company works with an engineering firm to install a new dust collection system in one of its facilities.

 

Headquartered in Johnston, Iowa, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., a DuPont company, develops, produces, and markets a full line of top-quality seeds, forage, and grain additives, providing services to customers in nearly 70 countries. The company operates a production facility in Laurinburg, N.C., that conditions, treats, and packages soybean and wheat seeds grown by local farmers. In fall 2005, the company decided to upgrade the facility by installing new equipment, including a more efficient dust collection system. To do so, the company worked with an engineering firm that has upgraded many of its other facilities in the past.

Conditioning soybean and wheat seeds

Each year, area farmers plant and grow soybeans, summer wheat, or winter wheat in the fields surrounding Laurinburg. After harvest, the farmers transport the seeds to Pioneer's production facility, where the seeds are conditioned for later use. During the conditioning process, the seeds are moved through various conditioning machines that clean them. The seeds are then conveyed to the facility's treatment area where they're coated with herbicides and insecticides before being packaged and distributed to various outlets for sale. The production facility typically operates two shifts a day, except during peak times between midsummer and late spring, when it operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to handle the increased seed volume.

Underperforming cyclone separators

In the past, the facility used a dust collection system that consisted of several cyclone separators located outside the facility to remove the dust generated during the conditioning process. Some of the cyclones were connected directly to the conditioning machines to remove foreign materials and dust from the machines. To prevent fugitive dust from escaping into the facility, other cyclones were connected to dust collection hoods located at the various material-transfer points between the machines. And one stand-alone sock filter was connected to the treatment area to remove the dust containing the herbicides and insecticides, keeping it separated from the other dust because of special disposal requirements.

During operation, the heavier dust particles pulled from the conditioning machines and material-transfer points settled to the cyclone separators' bottoms. This dust discharged from the cyclones into a wagon for disposal. However, the smaller dust particles that weren't separated from the airstream were exhausted into the atmosphere since the cyclones lacked filters.

So in fall 2005 when Pioneer decided to upgrade the facility, it wanted to remove the old inefficient cyclones and install a new high-efficiency dust collection system that would exceed EPA dust emission standards and improve the working and safety conditions inside the facility, particularly in the treatment area.