Pneumatic transfer system

smwilliamson said:

Bill Bennion said:

Has anyone used pneumatic transfer for wood pellets? I have a Nutone three stage whole house vacuum system that I would like to use as the power source for a transfer system from a 7 ton silo to my PB 105 or at least to an inside bin. Could I use a Corn-Vac for this or just a sealed bin with slide gate.

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I sure would like to help you out here. I have been behind a few of these homemade jobs. It's really not that difficult. A 30 gallon metal trash can is ideal. You do not want to hook up to the unit itself unless you can seal off the air from the hopper toward the burn pot. Things get messing when you introduce all that pressure with nowhere for it to escape to. You want to use static free hose. You need an air feed and an air return and a proximity switch to open the circuit when the can is full and a toggle switch to turn it off when you are emptying the bin. Depending upon the size of the motor you should be able to go about 50 feet or more.

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peakbagger said:

One thing to be very aware of is static electricity for a homebuilt system. The movement of the pellets through the hoses will generate static and if you dotn bleed it off, sparks will occur.
Granted the pellets probably wont catch fire with a spark but the fines that inevitably are in the mix will. The entire path of the pellets from begining to end needs to be grounded in one continuous path. If you look around on the web for grounding dust collector systems, (whihc are even more notorious for fires), there are a lot of good suggestions. Do note that even though plastic piping is tempting its a bear to ground.

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