Progress update on filling my own silo's

[Richardin52]

A while back I made a post about how I made two wood silo's, one up over my garage which used a flex auger to move the pellets to a point where they drop down to my pellet boiler and the other 5 ton silo in my apartment house right next to my other pellet boiler. I can save $50.00 a ton trucking my own bulk pellets which will save me about $1,000.00 per year.

I've been playing around with blowing pellets up into my silo's and thought some of you might be interested in what I have found out to date.

The blower I am using is a shop type double bag sawdust collector, it has a 1 HP electric motor 220 volt 11.5 amps and a 5 inch outlet. Seems to have plenty of power to move pellets.

My first attempt was to reduce down to a 4 inch pipe and blow air through it up to the silo attach a Y to the pipe and dump pellets into the pipe using the Y fitting. The results was to much back pressure through the Y fitting. So much that pellets could not be dumped in. I think if I had a large enough amount of pellets I might have been able to force them in but feel there is a better way.

My son and I have come up with tree idea's so far and have decided to make a air ventury. It should be done tomorrow and we will test it Saturday. Basically we are going to start with a 4 inch pipe then reduce the pipe size from 4 inch to 3 inch for a short distance then increase it back to 4 inches. When the pipe is reduced it will increase pressure and when it goes back to 4 inches it will reduce pressure. we plan to introduce pellets into the three inch pipe using a 1 1/2 inch pipe. In order to create the ventury the 1 1/2 inch pipe must extend into the three inch pipe so that air flows around the 1 1/2 inch pipe. The end of the pipe will be cut at about a 45% angle with the long side of the angle facing the on coming air. This will allow the pellets to drop into the air flow and will (we hope) create a suction effect on the 1 1/2 inch tube because of the increase in pipe size just in front of the 1 1/2 inch tube.

If there is any interest I will keep you posted.

 

[johninwi]

I'm intrested in how this goes, i've read a few older posts where people have used vacuumes to transfer, you'd need to seal the hopper and move the dust collector to the top to act as a vac but this may be work
http://www.cornvac.com/
this may offer a few other ideas for you too.

As a matter of curiosity, how high are you lifting to the silo? your average refill, how many tons? the time frame of moving the pellets into the hopper?

a totaly different approach might be a conveyor with buckets,

 

[Markus38]

I did the same thing you are trying to do. My solution is not as fast as I would like but I am going 7 ft up. I tried to quicken it this summer but I could not improve on it.
Check out the thread here:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/my-quest-for-inexpensive-heat.123489/page-2#post-1710383
let me know if you get any ideas on how I can improve mine.
thanks

 

[velvetfoot]

Here is another thread:https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/blowing-pellets-with-a-leaf-blower.89327/
That seems similar to the Y method that didn't work.
Is there an outlet for the air from the silo?

 

[Richardin52]

The ventury is done. Here are some pictures of it. Earlier today we tried to vacuum pellets up into the silo using the 1hp dust collector on the exhaust pipe using both a 4" and 2" pipe. Neither had enough suction.

The idea with the ventury is to create a small negative pressure when the pipe gets larger which will allow pellets to be dumped into the black pipe and then blown up the 4" pipe. The volume of pellets coming from the 2" black pipe should not overwhelm the amount of air flowing in the 4" pipe and we hope it will move a lot of pellets fast.

To answer some questions, I need to lift pellets 15 feet. I have two silos one will hold 5 ton and the other between 2 1/2 and 3 ton.