Facility Feature
Rebuilt with More Storage

In a grain dust explosion in December 2020, West Central AgriService, a division of MFA Inc. with a rail terminal in Adrian, MO (816-297-2138), lost a 330,000-bushel concrete workhouse and related grain handling equipment.

Today roughly four times the amount of upright storage stands on the spot in the form of three McPherson jumpform concrete tanks holding 440,000 bushels each. Between upright and temporary storage, the Adrian facility holds about 5 million bushels.

“No one has ever determined a cause,” says Agri Services Manager Dale Guss, who has been with MFA for 31 years and at West Central since 2006. “It was in mid-morning, and we were loading railcars. It happened when we were switching between railcars.”

The cost of rebuilding over the next year and half is estimated around $16 million, only part of which was paid for by insurance.

But what MFA got for its efforts surpassed the original elevator from before 2020. Besides the additional storage, the rebuild included a new pit and receiving leg, a shipping leg, the facility’s second bulk weigh loadout scale for origin weights, and capacity improvements elsewhere in the terminal.

Initial Phase

The first – and smaller – of two phases of construction was to get the elevator capable of receiving grain for fall harvest in 2021, which begins in early September through November.

For that phase, MFA West Central acted as its own contractor and brought in D N R Construction Services Inc., St. Paul, MN (651-484-6521), as millwright. The contractor had performed work at the Adrian site before.

Phase I, which ran from February to July 2021, was primarily a repair project. The crew did repairs on a GSI corrugated steel tank that holds roughly 700,000 bushels. They also replaced receiving and reclaim conveyors and a leg at an adjacent eight tank slipform concrete annex.

Expansion Phase

Work on Phase II, expanding storage and handling capacity, began as soon as the elevator was operational to receive grain again in July 2021.

Again, MFA/West Central acted as its own general contractor and took five bids for millwright on Phase II. SMA, LLC, Monticello, MN (763-295-4367), was awarded the contract.

Actual construction began in October 2021, and everything was operational by August 30, 2022.

The new storage consisted of three 440,000-bushel McPherson jumpform concrete tanks roughly on the same site as the former workhouse. They stand 70 feet in diameter and 136 feet tall.

MFA Director of Facility Engineering and Project Manager Nathan Belstle says roughly 500 16-inch auger cast pilings were sunk up to 24 feet deep beneath each tank due to soil conditions at the site.

The flat-bottom tanks are outfitted with Springland 16-inch sweep augers, and plans call for the addition of BinMaster radar-type level indicators and mechanical high-level switches.

Marshall Electrical Contracting Inc., Marshall, MO (660-886-8159), manufactured and installed eight-cable grain temperature monitoring systems per bin.

“Marshall Electric programmed and installed the automation system for the plant,” Belstle says. “Most of the hazard monitoring sensors they used were from Electro-Sensors.”

The new tanks also are equipped with a set of four AGI Airlanco centrifugal fans per tank. These are capable of supplying 1/7 cfm per bushel of aeration through in-floor ducting

Grain Handling

At the northeast end of the three tanks, workers installed a 1,500-bushel mechanical receiving pit with a 10-foot-x-26-foot grate.

The pit feeds a GSI 30,000-bph receiving leg equipped with two rows of Maxi-Lift 16x8 buckets mounted on a 36-inch belt. This, in turn, feeds grain into a Schlagel eight-duct swing-type distributor.

All of this equipment plus a 40,000-bph shipping leg are encased in an Allstate support tower on a 16-foot-x-24-foot footprint. Allstate also supplied catwalks for the project.

The distributor sends grain out to the McPherson tanks via GSI 30,000-bph overhead drag conveyors, and the distributor also can reach the concrete annex, the steel tank, and a new dryer.

Each of the McPherson tanks have sidedraw spouts. Otherwise, they empty onto an AGI Hi Roller 40,000-bph enclosed belt conveyor in a below-ground tunnel running back to the new receiving and shipping legs.

The GSI shipping leg includes two rows of Maxi-Lift 20x8 buckets mounted on a 44-inch belt. The leg deposits grain into the upper garners of a C & A Scales 40,000-bph bulkweigher. The scale, under the control of a Greenstone Systems one-Weigh automation system, can fill railcars on one of two parallel tracks with a swinging spout. Workers are protected with a trolley unit from Fall Protection Systems.

Guss notes that it takes about six minutes to fill a covered hopper car. For now, the facility can handle up to 30 railcars at a time.

This year, MFA West Central installed a new GSI 5,000-bph, natural gas-fired tower dryer, which has not yet been used. Grain can reach the dryer via the distributor into any of the bins in the facility.

Ed Zdrojewski, editor

From July/August 2022 Grain Journal Issue

MFA INC.

Columbia, MO • 573-874-5111

Founded: 1914

Storage capacity: 50 million bushels at 80 locations

Annual volume: 95 million bushels

Number of members: 45,000+

Number of employees: 1,700

Crops handled: Corn, soybeans, soft red winter wheat, sorghum

Services: Grain handling and merchandising, feed, agronomy, precision ag

Key personnel at Adrian:

Dale Guss, Agri Services manager

Nathan Belstle, director of facility engineering and project manager

Rock Marquardt, grain origination

Shane Bunn, superintendent

Teresa Dyer, bookkeeper

Adrian Supplier List

Aeration fans • AGI Airlanco

Bearing sensors • Electro-Sensors, Inc.

Bin sweeps • Springland Mfg.

Bucket elevators • GSI

Bulk weigh scale • C & A Scales

Bulk weigh scale controls • Greenstone Systems

Catwalks • Allstate Tower, Inc.

Concrete tank builder • McPherson Concrete Storage Systems

Contractors • SMA, LLC; DNR Services

Control system • Marshall Electrical Contracting, Inc.

Conveyor (belt) • AGI Hi Roller

Conveyors (drag) • GSI

Distributor • Schlagel Inc.

Dust collection system • CAMCORP

Elevator buckets • Maxi-Lift Inc.

Engineering • VAA, LLC

Grain dryer • GSI

Grain temperature system • Marshall Electrical Contracting, Inc.

Level indicators • BinMaster Level Controls

Manlift • LiftCo Manlift

Millwright • SMA, LLC

Motion sensors • Electro-Sensors, Inc.

Motors • Baldor Motors

Sampler • GSI

Speed reducers • Dodge Industrial, Inc.

Steel storage • Meridian Mfg.

Tower support system • Allstate