What are primary advantages and disadvantages of storing grain in warehouses?
Advantages: • More versatile storage and lower unit storage costs than silos and steel bins; • Usually can aerate with lower pressure, less expensive fans, such as vane-axial or low speed centrifugal fans due to shallower grain depths. Disadvantages: • Much harder to aerate successfully due to wide grain mass with shallow sidewall grain depths vs high grain peaks along the center make airflow distribution less uniform; • Airflow rates need to be much higher than for steel bins to assure that grain receiving the least amount of airflow is sufficiently cooled; • Much more difficult and labor intensive to unload than steel bins or concrete silos; • More difficult to seal for high efficacy fumigation due to large surface area of structure. Wide variation in tightness or leakiness of flat storage vs steel bins or concrete silos. • Much harder to manage grain moisture and insects.
