Grain processing: cleaning

Grain cleaning reduces the problems that occur during storage and handling. Clean grains save storage space and increase marketability.

Over the years there has been rapid development of machinery for grain cleaning. The one most often used employ the air screen system, which was the basis for the oldest cleaning machines and still is the easiest and most effective form of cleaning bulk grain.

The mill is the point where cereals are transformed from agricultural commodities to foods or food ingredients.

Physical cleaning takes place in the mill to remove straw and chaff, stones, soil and metal fragments, which could damage the mill, damaged or ergot-infected grains, seed other than the cereal grain required, insects and other foreign matter.

In preparing wheat cleaning, the wheat is blown into hopper scales that record the quantity of uncleaned wheat. Some of the coarser impurities are removed by this process.

The grain then passed over a series of coarse and fine sieves that further remove contaminating materials, including chaff and straw.

The various dry cleaning processed used in modern four mills have little effect on the microbiological condition of the grain.

The efficiency of the cleaning operation is dependent on the efficiency of the machine, the selection of appropriate screens for the particular task and the competence of the operator.
Grain processing: cleaning