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Silo-Bag Cleaner Makes Disposal Easier
It's a cross between a mower conditioner, wringer washing machine and a baler, say engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who hope that one day their prototype silo-bag washer will be widely used to help farmers dispose of plastic used for silage bags and bunker covers.
Getting rid of the used plastic
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Silo-Bag Cleaner Makes Disposal Easier CROP STORAGE Silos (50) 31-4-42 It's a cross between a mower conditioner, wringer washing machine and a baler, say engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who hope that one day their prototype silo-bag washer will be widely used to help farmers dispose of plastic used for silage bags and bunker covers.
Getting rid of the used plastic has been a problem for years, says Brian J. Holmes, Biological Systems Engineering professor. Consider that one 300-cow operation can use as many as 12 silage bags a year. That amounts to 3,600 ft. of plastic 12 ft. in diameter.
The plastic is bulky to handle and expensive to dispose of at landfills - if you can find a landfill to accept it. So many farmers simply burn or bury it, which is illegal in most states. Or they don't do anything at all and the plastic piles up.
Recycling is the best solution, but the plastic needs to be cleaned first. A UW engineer student designed and experimented with a prototype that brushes the dirt off the plastic, pulls the plastic through rollers and deposits it in a basket where it is compacted with a plunger, ready to be tied into a plastic bale about the size of a small hay bale. The machine operates off a tractor's hydraulics.
In a recent demonstration, the bales were loose, Holmes says, and there were mechanical problems that need improvement. "We're in the early stages," he emphasizes. "We need to get it to work better." The goal is to improve the machine and demonstrate it at Farm Technology Days in Green County, Wisconsin, in September.
Ideally, producers would be able to clean and bale the plastic and transport it to a recycler. Or an entrepreneur would take the machine to farms, bale the plastic and haul it away. It may be feasible to recycle the plastic into a variety of products or use it as a fuel.
"The whole thing hinges on economics," Holmes says, as well as what regulations may be created in the future.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Brian J. Holmes, 232b Agricultural Engineering Building, 460 Henry Mall, Madison, Wis., 53706 (ph 608 262-0096; bjholmes @facstaff.wisc.edu).
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