Bucket elevator, or grain elevator, is an important piece of equipment in the food processing industry, including rice mills. This industry stalwart offers an unmatched ability to meet producers’ requirements for rice processing with its robust lifting capacity. Depending on the size of your rice mill, you can opt for varying capacities of rice bucket elevators, which ultimately determine their application. If you are wondering why you just can’t choose a standard size and employ it in your mill, there are several reasons behind it. Irrespective of the size, any bucket elevator can transport grains vertically. However, with a rice mill elevator of optimised size, you can use the machinery for its intended application. Moreover, the appropriate size, especially if your need is for a smaller one, will help bring down the cost of the unit and offer maximum handling efficiency.
If you are looking to understand more about bucket elevator capacity and want to optimise your rice mill efficiency, this guide is for you.
How the Right Bucket Elevator Size Affects Price?
If you have operated a bucket elevator, you would know that the machine is quite impactful. It can move weights as low as ~130 cubic ft. per minute and as big as ~3700 cubic ft. per minute. That kind of versatility and strength point towards the affordable and powerful lifting capacity at the required scale of your business. It is robust, useful, and sized as per your specific rice mill needs. Let us understand in detail how this works.
Bucket Elevator Capacity: How to Calculate?
A bucket elevator is a piece of integral machinery in many industries. Whether you handle raw staples in bulk, such as flour or rice, process value-added snacks or cereals, or specialise in packaging delicate materials, such as wrapped candy or pasta, you will need a bucket elevator. However, despite the overall production capacity being the same, the amount of material you pass through the mill elevator will be very different in each case. This means that as a rice mill owner, your requirements for bucket elevator capacity will be unique. Here are the factors you ned to consider to calculate the grain elevator capacity:
- Bucket Capacity: You can calculate the overall volume of every bucket in your machinery in cubic feet from the length and breadth of the bucket.
- Bucket Spacing: The space between the elevator bucket chain overlaps and that helps avoid spillage of the transported material.
- Chain Speed: The chain speed at which the bucket elevator moves in ft. per minute. This depends on the robustness of your machinery’s motors, the weight of the grains, and their fragility.
Once you have these measurements, you can calculate the bucket elevator capacity using this simple formula:
Capacity = Bucket Capacity x Bucket Spacing x Belt Speed
For example, for a rice mill elevator system with each bucket carrying two cubic feet of product spaced at one ft. intervals along a chain that moves at roughly 30 ft. per minute, the capacity of the conveyor would be roughly 60cfm.
Check out some robust bucket elevators with advanced technology that will fulfil your grain transporting requirements in the rice mill: https://www.suriengineers.co.in/products/grain-elevators/
Rightsizing Capacity
Every rice mill owner’s requirements vary, of course, due to the different amounts of grain that can fit into a specific volume without significant degradation. The requirements will also differ due to the number and weight of buckets that a bucket conveyor system of a certain power can handle safely.
The bucket elevator is a highly useful equipment for its design that stands the test of time, and it is quite flexible. You can customise several factors that affect its capacity to meet your needs, such as the capacity and size of individual buckets, the number of buckets on the belt, and the speed of the belt itself.
Conclusion
The food industry is constantly evolving and you may find several options to effectively lift raw material to a higher level. So why still choose a “legacy” technology like rice mill bucket elevators? Due to the high amount of precision required when handling delicate and small-sized grains such as rice, it is imperative to have reliable and durable rice mill machinery that lifts loads as per your mill’s capacity. To optimise your rice mill processing method, you must invest in a high-quality bucket elevator solution that fits your application and sizing requirements. While calculating the bucket elevator capacity for determining the accurate size may seem simple, it is best to work with an experienced engineer or rice mill machine manufacturer who considers all relevant factors for accurate sizing. Accordingly, buy the correct machinery that helps you meet your rice mill business goals.