Potato storage facility with 1.8 m cellar depth
Description
Last weekend, the Verstraete-Fort family from Maarkedal inaugurated their new potato store in the presence of a huge gathering! On Sunday, hundreds of keenly interested people visited the 2,000 m² Myldes shed. Some two million kg of Challenger potatoes are stored nice and dry on top of the meshed drying floor. This is a long-term storage facility, and the potatoes are partly intended for packaging and partly for export. The family is very forward-looking and has opted for refrigerated storage.
What is so unique about this project is the 1.8 m cellar depth. This offers several advantages:
- Easy to clean (e.g. the Verstraete-Fort family prefers to clean using industrial sweepers).
- A well-designed pressure chamber is extremely important due to the considerable drop in air speed within the channel. Climanova has supplied the ventilation system for the technical equipment.
The new potato storage facility is pre-designed for mechanical cooling. The storage computer and the wiring are already in place. The installation of the mechanical cooling equipment will therefore be quite simple.
The pressure chamber is also equipped with stainless steel mesh channels. These can easily be cleaned with water.
The potato storage facility is equipped with 25 cm and 32 cm thick insulated wall panels (8 cm of which is insulation) to ensure constant temperature control. The entire roof surface area is covered with 120 mm insulation. A pressurised passageway has also been incorporated on 2 floors, including built-in fans, and equipped with a drive-in corridor to allow access for a self-propelled industrial sweeper into the pressurised passageway/inspection area.
Potato store loading in two shakes of a lamb’s tail
In October 2017, the family used the AVR potato store loaders (dual belt, Cobra store loader) to load the potatoes into storage. They are particularly complimentary about this equipment:
Anne Fort states with great enthusiasm: "In just seven minutes, we were able to move the potatoes from unit 1 to unit 2, and the farmers were even able to continue their supply during this transfer. That’s how quickly it was done! At least these machines ‘communicate’ with each other, so they work in perfect harmony."