Description
ABC Hansen Africa has developed over the past 20 years, a compact, single level Maize Milling Plant – to produce high quality, degerminated, super and special maize meal.
The advantage of using a roller mill instead of a hammer mill when milling the samp and chips – is an improved yield of strict definition super maize meal – as the roller mill mills using a cutting action, where the hammer mill uses a pulverizing action – thus the roller mill creates less fine particles – increasing the yield of super, and reducing the yield of special meal.
For an article on the types of maize meals and different milling options – see here: Milling Maize Options
The plant designed to be able to be installed in most warehouse and factory buildings, without special adjustments necessary to the floors or roof structures – to reduce the entry cost of owning a highly efficient maize milling plant.
A process flow is as follows:
The grain is received from silos or from bags via an auger that is speed controlled via a Variable Frequency drive – and fed into the Quaill I eccentric cleaner where the maize is cleaned of over and under sized particles.
After cleaning, the maize is discharged into a dampener with a dampener control unit, which adds between 2% and 5% water to the maize – depending on initial moisture content – as well as the grade of maize.
After dampening, the grain is conveyed to a conditioning bin, where the maize is allowed to condition for up to 1 hour – depending on the type of maize, giving time for the water to penetrate the outer skin of the maize, making it more elastic and reducing the adhesion between the bran and the endosperm – allowing the degerminator peel the bran off the endosperm in large pieces, increasing the yield and the efficiency of the degerminator – The moisture added to the maize is dependant on the initial moisture content and the type of maize – for typical hard white maize – with an optimal moisture content of 11.5% – a typical moisture addition would be 4% – for a target moisture content of 15.5% – and the conditioning time should be between 1 and 2 hours – depending on the hardness of the maize. For soft maize – typically found in East Africa and Eastern South Africa – the conditioning should be very quick, with approximately 10 minutes of conditioning time – and a target moisture content of 13.5% only.
After conditioning, the maize is conveyed from the conditioning bin to the 1.5TPH Degerminator which removes the bran and the germ meal (commonly referred to as hominy chop) from the maize kernel , discharging these byproducts from the degerminator, while the samp and chips (degerminated maize) are discharge through two aspirators to remove the remaining bran and germ meal by air, and are then collected and conveyed to the first roller mill. The degerminator produces two qualities of degerminated maize – Samp – being the large, clean particles, and the Chips. The chips are smaller degerminated kernels, and many times still have some germ meal and bran attached to them. The chips pass through a turbosifter below the degerminator rotor – where the remaining germ meal and bran is rubbed off, and the clean chips then pass through to the aspiration legs. The chips and samp then pass through two aspirators – where the remaining bran and germ meal is aspirated off of the degerminated maize – and the degerminated maize then passes to the roller mill.
The Hurricane Quad roller mill then mills down the samp and chips to a maize meal, and sifts the meal repeatedly – to remove the remnant bran, and to size the meal into the correct qualities. South African Super quality meal – is typically sized between 300micron and 800micron. The sifter has 3 sizings – being Super quality, Special quality and Bran.
After milling and sifting – the maize is conveyed to a packing bin – from where the first quality is packed.
Optionally – you can add a dosting unit to the system, for the addition of essential minerals and vitamins – as is required in certain jurisdictions.
The entire plant is controlled from a motor control centre, which is included in the price
