Darrell Malczewski, regional sales manager for Prater Industries, joins Feed & Grain Chat to shed light on the critical role particle size reduction plays in grain milling and its impact on the quality and consistency of animal feed. Malczewski explains how factors like moisture content, abrasiveness, and brittleness of the grain will influence grinding equipment selection and how grinding control and monitoring systems can optimize operations, ensure uniform particle size, and reduce costs for millers.
Transcription of Feed & Grain Chat with Darrell Malczewski, regional sales manager, Prater Industries:
Elise Schafer, editor, Feed & Grain: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Feed & Grain Chat. I'm your host Elise Schafer, editor of Feed & Grain. This edition of Feed & Grain Chat is brought to you by WATT Global Media and FeedandGrain.com. FeedandGrain.com is your source for the latest news, product and equipment information for the grain handling and feed manufacturing industries.
Today, I'm joined on Zoom by Darrell Malczewski, regional sales manager for Prater Industries. He's here to discuss the role of particle size reduction in animal feed and considerations for selecting equipment and controls for feed mills.
Hi, Darrell, thanks for joining me today.
Malczewski: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the subject. Thank you so much.
Schafer: My pleasure! Now, what role does particle size reduction play in quality and consistency of feed and what methods are commonly used in feed milling?
Malczewski: Yes, that's a great question, so I'm going to start off answering the later part of that, because it ties into the main portion of the question. Feed milling is typically produced by one of two means. There are hammermills and roller mills. And hammermills are a means by which the grain is impacted using anvils or blades or hammers swinging around a high-speed rotor, and they typically also use us a screen to control when the particles are of the correct size and can exit that process.
Roller milling utilizes one or more series of rolls that have a gap between them to compress, crack and crush the particles more gently. Roller mills typically will produce more uniform, or I should say, narrow particle distribution, whereas hammermills differentiate by being able to crush the grains to a little bit finer meal particle size. And they have specific benefits for certain types of feed milling operations, whether it be chicken, steer, dairy cows or even hog, so the particle size method is really important, and the size of the of the particle that's achieved is very important. And the availability of the nutrients for the animal, and that particle size, again, might be unique based on the animal and perhaps even its life cycle.
A good example of that would be with chickens where a younger chicken, whose beak isn't fully developed, might need to utilize a smaller grain to properly ingest and digest, versus as that chicken gets older. For cattle or for hog, it might be at a different particle size, but all in all, the particle size reduction process is vitally important to making the nutrients available such that the endosperm is exposed and the grain has enough surface area for good digestibility, as well as the uptake of protein and starch that is of benefit to the animal's growth. It's nurturing, and even perhaps, let's say, it might affect the dairy production or how many eggs a hen might lay. And again, like I said, it's unique and different for each type of animal and even the life stage of the animal.
Schafer: Now, what about the material properties, like abrasiveness, brittleness and moisture content? Why are these important factors to consider when selecting grinding equipment and systems?
Malczewski: Yeah, it all plays together. So, moisture content and brittleness are very much related, specifically regarding feed milling, a moister grain or something with a higher moisture content can make it less brittle, and that can affect how well it cracks or grinds to a size. So, as just a specific example, typically, a cereal grain, like a corn might be typically milled with around 12 to 14% moisture, but if that grain is received wetter at 16 or 18% the capacity or efficiency of the grinding apparatus might be reduced because it can’t grind as fast, or the loss of embrittlement might result in a change in particle size that might be detrimental to the efficiency and use of that grain in a particular application.
Abrasiveness is also very important in terms of the miller's cost. And all grain is going to have a certain amount of abrasiveness in it, and it will vary based on the grain. In some cases, something like a legume might have the hull removed by the farm, and it would be prepared by removing the hull splitting and then sending to the grain miller. In other cases, you're grinding the grain with the pericarp or the skin on it, in which case, measures can be taken to outfit that grain miller with abrasion-resistant features that can lower their overall operating cost per pound to make it more profitable.
Schafer: How can a grinding control and monitoring system optimize operations to specific particle size requirements?
Malczewski: That's a great question, as well. That can be related to the specific system for grinding and also can be related to upstream and downstream processes for a typical grinding system. Let's say for a hammer mill, an optimized method of feeding the grain uniformly to the mill will benefit the efficiency of the milling apparatus, thus lowering the cost per pound to produce that grain. It can also result in greater consistency of the particle sizing and benefit to the animal and grinding at that method on a roller mill.
There could be more enhanced methods of control and automation that monitor the gap between the rolls, the pressure on the rolls to again achieve the uniformity necessary to produce a consistently sized grain. There's also several other methods of things that are interrelated to, let's say, upstream processing, where a medium- to large-scale producer might have moisture monitoring coming in under grain loads. And truck receiving, they typically are using what they call a lance to stab the truck from above, and they're taking a sample and measuring that before the grain can be accepted, ensuring that it meets their requirements for downstream processing.
Schafer: What other operations could be automated with a monitoring and control system to enhance grinding system efficiency?
Malczewski: Yeah, there's a couple for a grinding and control systems. We could include, let's say you could have an automated PLC system that will monitor the entire process and also start up and shut it down in a predefined sequence. So, if you look at building blocks to put an entire system together, that hammer mill, or roller mill would have a feeder. The hammer mill might have a suction system, which can make the hammermill work more efficiently, and help control the dust. And that suction system actually pulls the product out of the mill and collects it somewhere. Those other components can be interconnected and monitored and operated by the control system to provide a level of automation that reduces the operator's interaction and also provides control in the event of an upset.
Let's say where the hammermill has been overfed, or the roller mill is not operating with the right gap setting. There can be outputs that tell the operator we have an aberration that needs to be tended to before that grain is ground for the next four hours, and perhaps now that material is four hours’ worth of grain that's not properly sized. So, the automation portion of it can really bring the whole system together, not just a mill, and operate it very efficiently with the minimal amount of operator interaction.
Schafer: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your insights today. Darrell.
Malczewski: Really, again, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Schafer: That's all for today's Feed & Grain Chat. If you'd like to see more videos like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel, sign up for the Industry Watch Daily eNewsletter, or go to Feedandgrain.com and search for videos. Thanks again for watching, and we hope to see you next time!