Facility Feature
Ag Valley Cooperative Adds Upright Storage at Elevator Feeding Grain to Nearby Rail Terminal

Orleans, NE — In 2018, Ag Valley Cooperative replaced an old 1.1-million-bushel hoop building that failed in 2011. Since then, the truck house at Orleans, NE (308-824-3431), has operated with a double receiving pit and leg, a loadout spout for loading trucks, and a single 1.2-million-bushel circular ground pile.

“Failure probably isn’t the right word,” says Gordy Lange, Ag Valley’s in-house construction project manager. “The hoop building deteriorated over time. But it got to the point where structural engineers wouldn’t go in there.”

Still, there was a strong need for upright storage to house wheat, corn, and soybeans prior to shipment via truck to Ag Valley’s rail terminal 20 miles away in Edison, NE. Not only would well-managed grain in corrugated steel tanks offer better quality, but upright tanks are far less labor-intensive than any sort of flat storage.

Three steel tanks, grain handling equipment

The 2019 project involved the addition of three 565,000-bushel Chief Agri corrugated steel tanks plus related grain handling equipment.

The cooperative also replaced an older leg for higher bph capacity (and higher elevation to reach the tall new tanks) and installed a new concrete floor on the existing ground pile.

Ag Valley hired M&N Millwright, Kearney, NE (308-236-0555), to serve as contractor on the $6.8 million project.

“They’re a Chief dealer, and we’ve always had a good relationship with Chief,” says Lange. “M&N provided us with a way to have enough storage up for the summer wheat harvest and the rest for the fall.”

In addition to M&N, W Design Associates, McCook, NE (308-345-2370), did engineering on the project.

Also, Blackhawk Foundation Co. Inc., Geneseo, IL (309-944-4641), supplied and installed the pilings beneath the tank foundations. Quad County Ag LLC, Paton, IA (515-968-4180), supplied concrete and poured the foundations.

Ag Valley, which has its own electricians on staff, served as its own electrical contractor and designed its own automation system.

Construction on the project began in March 2018. The first of the three tanks was ready to receive grain around Oct. 15, and the rest were completed a few weeks later. c

The three new tanks stand 105 feet in diameter, 67 feet tall at the eaves, and 95 feet tall at the peaks. They are topped with Chief Agri’s exclusive roof design to support a peak load of 50,000 lbs. per tank.

Concrete pilings support new structures

To support those structures on the local soil types, Blackhawk Foundation installed 153 18-inch concrete pilings per tank sunk 50 to 55 feet below the surface to reach bedrock.

The tanks are equipped with outside stiffeners, flat concrete floors atop 8-foot stem walls, 24-cable TSGC wireless SafeTrack grain temperature monitoring systems, and Prairie Land Millwright Bin Gator zero-entry, paddle-type sweep conveyors. “The sweep conveyors have worked really well so far, and they’ve been moving between 5,000 to 10,000 bph,” says Lange.

Four Caldwell 50-hp centrifugal fans per tank supply 1/10 cfm per bushel of aeration on small grains and 1/7 cfm per bushel on coarse grains through in-floor ducting.

Crews replaced the existing receiving leg with a new Chief Agri 25,000-bph leg receiving grain from an existing pit. This leg is equipped with two rows of orange Maxi-Lift TigerTuff 16x8 buckets mounted on a 34-inch All-State belt.

The leg deposits grain into a four-hole InterSystems rotary distributor, which sends grain out to upright or temporary storage or down a spout to an existing surge bin for loading trucks.

From the distributor, a set of Chief Agri 25,000-bph overhead drag conveyors carry grain out to the upright storage.

The tanks have no sidedraw spouts but empty directly onto Chief Agri 10,000-bph drags, which in turn, empty onto a 20,000-bph above-ground AGI Hi Roller enclosed belt conveyor that runs back to the new receiving leg.