Potato Handling Equipment for Efficient Crop Movement
When it comes to storage management, the seamless handling of crops is essential to ensure the preservation of quality and efficient distribution. Potatoes stand as a staple crop with year-round demand, necessitating a meticulous approach to their handling within storage facilities.
To meet the demands of this critical task, storage managers rely on specialized equipment designed for the precise handling of potatoes – from unloading them upon arrival to sorting and grading for quality control.
The process commences with the unloading of bulk potato deliveries from transport vehicles, primarily trucks and trailers. Potato unloaders are specialized machines crafted to facilitate the smooth and damage-free transfer of potatoes from the transport vehicle into storage bins or conveyor systems. This equipment often employs conveyor belts, chains, or augers to ensure a gentle yet efficient transfer of potatoes, minimizing any potential damage to the crop.
Traditionally, potatoes are picked up by hand and carried in baskets or bags to bulk storage areas in potato production environments that lack or have limited mechanization. Tubers for trade, long-distance transport, and/or long-term storage or processing are picked up by hand and handled in bags in semi-mechanized settings where part of the operations is manual, such as planting and hoeing.
The spuds are stored in bulk or pallet boxes of 1 or 1.5 tons in fully mechanized potato settings. The fully automatic harvester either discharges the lifted tubers directly into a trailer that continuously follows the harvester or is equipped with a 3-15 ton hopper that is emptied into a trailer regularly.
The taters are transported to the store on a trailer with a capacity of 10-30 tons, where they are emptied into a feed hopper with the same capacity, which acts as a buffer. To remove soil and clods, the hopper exit is equipped with a set of cleaning fluted rollers with adjustable distances.
Where growers choose a first grading operation into two sizes (the grades are stored in separate compartments), a conveyor belt empties them into a telescopic bulk piler swinging. Its movements ensure that no soil cones form while depositing, obstructing an even flow of ventilation air and that the dropping height never exceeds a certain distance, e.g. one meter.
All machine speeds and angles are set manually or remotely, with the storekeeper using a handheld device. Some conveyor belts, particularly those used to fill boxes, have a nodding tip to reduce the drop height. When pallet boxes or large bags are used, the feed hopper empties into a conveyor belt connected to a box filler (dipping elevator).
To read the complete article, please refer to our latest September–October 2023 print issue of Potato Processing International.