Silos & silo systems

Storage systems are now an indispensable part of production processes in modern industry and agriculture. On the one hand, they ensure that sufficient amounts of base and raw materials are available for the production process and, on the other hand, provide space-saving and secure storage. Valves handle the essential task of controlling the media when filling or emptying the silos.

Silos always work according to the same principle: The material to be stored is fed into the top of the silo with the aid of a riser – and controlled by a valve – and then falls to the floor inside the silo. The stored material is emptied through an opening or pipe at the bottom of the silo that is fitted with a valve.
Silos are funnel shaped at the bottom so that the stored material is guided to the opening. The materials are not emptied based on a “first-in first-out” principle but rather as a mixture that is formed within the funnel from material added at different times. This is because the emptying process causes a funnel flow effect across the whole height of the filled material in the silo, which means that materials from the top move downwards past all of the other levels. The material emptied from the silo is actually a cross section of all of the filled material.

In silos and silo systems, pinch valves are used to control the flow of materials into or out of the silo. Whether emptying silo trucks or tankers, filling silos via risers or the precision emptying of the silo from the bottom, pinch valves control and dose all of these processes.

Pinch valves can also be used for the filling and emptying of silo systems, which are combinations of multiple silos.

The pinch valves from AKO can be configured depending on the type of medium in the silo. For example, food-grade valve configurations (including versions with EHEDG certification) are used for the processing of food, while special abrasion-resistant configurations of pinch valves should be selected for highly abrasive media.