How Much Do You Know About A Steel Silo?

What is a silo? Silos are warehouses where bulk materials are stored. Based on application directions, it can be divided into two categories: agricultural silos and industrial silos. Silos are constructed of masonry, wood, reinforced concrete or steel.

The history of silos is long. As early as the period of human farming civilization, humans invented grain silos out of the need for grain storage. At first, most silos were made using riveting technology. In the industrial era, with the development of science and technology, silos were made using welding technology to weld metal plates to make metal silos. Most of the metal materials used were steel. The latest invention of the Lipp silo is a spiral double-layer steel silo. It was built by the German oil company Lipp using SM special equipment.

Steel Silo

Steel silos are mainly used to store cement, fly ash, slag powder, clinker, grain, and other powder and granular materials. For example, the famous Lipp silo is a galvanized steel silo for storing them.

AGICO mainly produces Lipp silos developed with the latest technology. The main types of silos produced by AGICO include:

If you have the type you want, please contact us to order!

Concrete VS Steel

A concrete silo is a vertical silo used to store bulk granular materials. It is made of steel, cement, sand, and stone. Reinforced concrete is used for silos with larger capacity. Its diameter can reach 12 meters in group silos and more than 18 meters in independent silos. Its height depends on the capacity and economic benefits of the lifting equipment, generally about 35 meters. If it is transported into the concrete silo by airflow, its height can reach 50 meters.

The following is the comparative data of the Lipp silo and concrete silo for reference.

	Lipp Silo	Concrete Silo
Cost	lower	higher
Service Life	20 years	50 years
Construction Period	15 days/6000t	45-60 days/6000t
Construction Height	lower	higher
Weight	lighter 1/4-1/6	heavier
Maintenance Period	2-3 years	free
Silo Wall	thicker	thinner
Floor Space	larger	smaller
Storage Material	solid, liquid, powder	solid

Brick Silo VS Steel Silo

A brick silo refers to a silo made of stone bricks and is a wise invention of early humans. In ancient China, people used brick silos to store materials, such as grain and other crops.

Although brick silos are simple in design and convenient to build, the types of materials they can store are very limited and they are not convenient for storing liquid or powdery substances. They can still be used as temporary storage silos. The diameter of brick silos is mostly less than 6 meters and the height does not exceed 20 meters.

Steel silos have many advantages over brick silos, such as storage of a wide range of materials, convenience, economy, etc.

Steel Silo Uses

A steel silo is available for storing bulk materials in many forms. It can be used as an agricultural silo to store grains, as well as an industrial silo to store raw materials required for industrial production.

Steel Solid Storage Containers

The most common steel silo used for solid material storage is the cement silo. There are also the lime silo, the coal silo, and the slag storage silo, as well as the calcined petroleum coke storage silo, etc. for industrial purposes. In addition, the steel grain silo is also widely used, including the wheat storage tank, the maize silo, rice storage silos, oil seed silos, silage silos, etc. There is also the chemical storage tank, which can be used in the chemical industry, used to store carbon black, activated carbon, calcined coke, urea, alumina, soda ash, fly ash, desulfurization gypsum, and other chemical products.

Steel Liquid Storage Containers

Steel silos used for the storage of liquid substances have very high requirements for sealing and anti-corrosion. There are milk silos that can be used in livestock plants, and the wastewater storage tank that can be used in industrial production.

Steel Powder Storage Containers

Steel silos are also capable to store powdered materials, and the most common one must be the flour silo. At the industrial level, fly ash silo is a typical powder storage container, which reduces the risk of environmental pollution, like groundwater contamination and air pollution caused by the widespread use of fly ash.

Design of Steel Silos

A perfect design is the first step in building a steel silo, otherwise, there will be a lot of troubles during the use. Therefore, the design of steel silo is very important. In the design process, we need to consider many factors, such as steel silo types, equipped auxiliary equipment, silo shape, silo bottom shape, silo color, silo dimension, etc.

Types of Steel Silo

There are three types of steel silos, one is the spiral steel silo, the other is bolted steel silo, and the last one is the welded steel silo.

Spiral steel silo: the spiral steel silo, also known as the Lipp steel silo, is a kind of steel silo which is made by connecting the spiral undercut of silo wall plate by a special processing method. The spiral steel silo adopts a double-layer spiral edge and sealing performance is good. The outer wall of the spiral steel silo is hung with a strengthening rib bent to 5 times the wall thickness. The construction of a 500 cubic meter silo can be completed by five people in one day. It occupies a small area and the minimum distance between two silos can reach 500mm. The height of the Lipp silo is limited by its load-bearing capacity. Currently, the maximum height of the Lipp silo is 38.5m. It has the advantages of simple construction, good explosion-proof performance, short construction period, low investment cost, diverse shapes, and beautiful appearance.

the spiral steel silo from AGICO

Bolted steel silo: the bolted steel silo is a kind of steel silo that is connected and assembled by high-strength bolts with the electric torque wrench. It has a wide range of height and diameter options, and the diameter can be selected between 2.7~32m. It occupies a small area, the distance between warehouses is less than 80cm, and the maximum capacity can reach 15,000 tons.

Welded steel silo: the welded steel silo is made of welded steel plates. It has a long service life, which can reach 50 years, and a large storage capacity, a single silo can store 5,000 tons to 100,000 tons. The walls of the silos are also relatively thick.

The Lipp silo double-slit technology adopted by AGICO is a patented technology of German technical engineer Xavef Lipp. The unique technology is used to produce galvanized steel plates to make the silo more corrosion-resistant and have a longer service life. The zinc content of the galvanized steel sheets produced is 275/m², which is higher than the national standard. In addition, steel bars are used to reinforce the silo body, and double-welded plates are used to reinforce the welds to enhance the stability of the silo body. AGICO can customize Lipp silos for you. If you have any ideas, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

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