Corn Storage and Cleaning

[Arti]

Picked up my Corn for the year, Close to 2 ton. This will be mixed with pellets until it runs out hopefully it will last until the end of March 2015.

The fan i use for cleaning is from a high efficiency gas furnace, It is also used to clean the vent pipe on the pellet stove. I clean the corn in the workshop to keep the mess out of the house,

We sweep the floor in the shop with the fines when we are done it's great sweeping compound!

The funnel is a 15 gallon barrel cut in half to fill the 30 and15 gallon barrels.
We cut large holes in the 50 gallon barrels and just dump it in the corn then reseal with a piece of plyboard and a few screws.
We can drive into the basement so a tractor is used to move the barrels

Any ideas on how to streamline the operation is appreciated.

 

[Bioburner]

Every time I think I will streamline, I throw another bucket threw the screen and 20 seconds latter I give the horse her ration and head for the house with a full bucket. Maybe tomorrow

 

[Arti]

Oldtimers kicked in forgot the pics of the funnel for filling the small barrels.

 

[johninwi]

First, thanks for the tip on barrels and resealing, i had been looking for barrels with removable lids.
The fines are a problem for burning? How so please.
Will the bucket of the tractor fit under the hopper chute? Would building a second smaller hopper high enough off the ground to fit the large barrels under help? Fill the raised hopper and straight to the large drums. An old horse water trough (the 200 gallon galvanized) is about the same size as tractor bucket, and cut whatever size hole flows the corn at the desired rate.

 

[Bioburner]

Fines are not much of an issue for Countryside. Bixby with its deep pot and high air speed sends fines right out the top and makes a dirty mess of the shelf.

 

[johninwi]

Fines are not much of an issue for Countryside. Bixby with its deep pot and high air speed sends fines right out the top and makes a dirty mess of the shelf.

don't see the pc45 having an issue then, thanks
since thats how it's marketed it better not have an issue

 

[Bioburner]

The fines may fill the fines box sooner than pellets so keep a watch on it.

 

[Arti]

Simple is best.
What is the tractor Arti?

Case 211b manufactured sometime in the 1950's about 30 hp. Those 2 barrels are approx 350 lbs apiece and it handles 2 of them with ease !!

 

[Arti]

The corn that I picked up is fairly clean, however it is like all feed stuff it has a lot of what is called bees wings in it, because that is what it looks like.
It will burn or go thru the stove but anytime that u move or pour the corn it floats in the air like a red cloud.
My idea was to blow it outside and have less mess in the house, one of my stove's is in the living area so I'm trying to keep it cleaner.
Out of 2 ton of shelled corn I collected about a 2.5 gallon bucket of this residue. The fan also blows out the corn husks and silk which could wind up on an auger and jam it although I've never had that problem.

 

[Arti]

Case eh?
You will have seen my old banger is a JD. We have one other JD but the rest are Fendt and MF.

I've never seen a Fendt, When I farmed I had a MF, nice tractor to drive. Lot's of JD's here

 

[mithesaint]

Do you do anything else to clean the corn other than the blower Arti? I'm on my first winter burning corn in my SCF 050, and wondered how clean it needed to be. I was planning on burning straight corn, although I could mix with pellets if that would work better. I have 3300 lbs of corn in the basement, and it's reasonably clean. There was a pretty stiff breeze outside when I was getting it out of the wagon, and most of the fines blew away.

 

[Bioburner]

I run corn through a 1/2 inch screen over 1/4. Pretty much anything that goes through the 1/2 is safe for the feed system and if its smaller than 1/4 inch is horse and pheasant feed.

 

[Arti]

Do you do anything else to clean the corn other than the blower Arti? I'm on my first winter burning corn in my SCF 050, and wondered how clean it needed to be. I was planning on burning straight corn, although I could mix with pellets if that would work better. I have 3300 lbs of corn in the basement, and it's reasonably clean. There was a pretty stiff breeze outside when I was getting it out of the wagon, and most of the fines blew away.

Mainly cleaned with the blower, I sort of watch it coming out of the wagon and get any long stems / sticks out by hand although there isn't much of that in there.

Caution, if you use a blower inside a lot of fines and chaff will blow around in the air it's not a problem for me in the shop but it would really make a mess in the house, that is the main reason I use the fan when it comes out of the wagon is to keep the chaff out of the house..

I suspect the scf -050 stove will have no problem burning reasonably clean corn straight from a grain bin I burned a few hundred lbs last year in both stoves without any cleaning whatsoever. I mix about 1/3 pellets as it seems to keep the clinker formation down I also put a handful of oyster shells in the bin while filling the stove.

 

[Arti]

It is funny how we do almost the absolute opposite;
We run 75% olive pit, 25% wheat. If we run straight olive pit then on low settings the smoke has a real wood smoke smell and the gunk on the glass is real hard to get off. with the wheat mix the smoke is back to the wheat smell and the glass just wipes clean. I think the higher burn temp of the wheat helps to pits to burn cleaner.

I think it has a lot to do with the stove and the venting, The St Croix seems to burn cleaner with the mix, the countryside doesn't seem so picky about it. We mix pellets in the countryside to get a higher flame, it sits in our living room and like to watch it burn sort of like a campfire in the middle of winter!!
I put some corn in an Englander pdvc 25 to see what would happen and that was a completely different type of flame.
A lot of uncontrolled variables when burning grains because of moisture content and I suspect the brand of corn planted makes a difference. I purchase corn from the same farmer every year so that stays somewhat stable .
I've only been mixing hardwood pellets, thinking about trying some softwood to see how it works out, corn is very affordable this year ($110 a ton) so we would like to burn more of it. Corn and Soybeans are the only crops that are plentiful in the area that we live in so the choices are somewhat limited.