"Tornado-In-A-Can" Pulverizes waste Products And Crop Residue

"Tornado-In-A-Can" Pulverizes waste Products And Crop Residue MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 25-4-43 Kansas farmer Frank Polifka has figured out how to tame the power of a tornado. Polifka spent years trying to make a man-made tornado. It appears that the controlled destruction of his "canned tornado" can grind and dry just about any material. Polifka calls his device a Windhexe. He says it can turn tin cans into pellets the size of BBs, reduce gravel to dust, and thoroughly pulverize waste products, including manure and dead animals, into powder which can be disposed of fairly easily. After building and successfully demonstrating his initial prototype about five years ago, Polifka teamed up with Dave Cantrell, Reeds Spring, Missouri, and Mike Banks, Eden, Maryland, to form Universal Agri Products, Inc. The company is exploring uses for the technology in a number of industries, from processing agricultural and food processing wastes to preparing metals and plastics for recycling. The "tornado in a can" uses air compressors to create a true tornadic vortex in the center of a conical chamber that looks much like a hopper-bottomed feed bin. Items to be processed are dropped into the top or tossed up from the bottom. The tornado-like vortex causes them to virtually explode. As the parts crash into each other in the chamber, they are smashed to powder. The longer the materials stay in the vortex, the smaller the particle created. Depending on the temperature of air and the type of compressors used, air temperature inside the vortex rises to between 200 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Additional heating of the air as it goes through the system can be used to dry materials instantly. Even without added heat, though, a slurry of broken eggs and eggshells fed into the Windhexe comes out as a powder. Universal Agri Products has tested several sizes of the Polifka machine, mostly to determine how well they work for processing food manufacturing wastes and garbage. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Universal Agri Products, Inc., 1775 Cedar Ridge Way, Reeds Spring, Mo. 65737 (ph 417 336-6666; fax 417 336-6630; E-mail: uap@universalagri.com; Website: www.universalagri.com or http://www.polifkawindhexe.com).

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