By Bruce Cochrane
Research conducted by PAMI indicates hydrovac technology offers an opportunity to reduce the time and cost of cleaning swine transport vehicles.
As part of a project being conducted in partnership with Swine Innovation Porc the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute is developing an improved system for cleaning swine transport vehicles.
Currently cleaning to a level needed to prevent the potential spread of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea requires significant man hours and substantial volumes of water.
Dr. Hubert Landry, a research scientist with the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute, says a system based on hydrovac technology, a system that uses high pressure water to dislodge material and a vacuum to remove it, has been developed.
Dr. Hubert Landry-Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute:
The phase 1 work that we just recently completed was very much a proof of concept.
We wanted to see if that was a viable option to clean trailers.
Our early prototype, we tested it in a trailer situation.
We cleaned a section of a trailer and then extrapolated those results to see what it would mean.
That system, the early prototype, its capacity indicates that we could clean the floors of a straight trailer, a 53 foot trailer with 2 levels in 40 minutes.
That's the floors alone and it should require about 40 gallons of water where as before cleaning a trailer would take several man hours and thousands of gallons of water.
So we're seeing a very good increase in capacity, however it is a theoretical capacity, it's on the floors only but certainly very promising results.
Dr. Laundry says the next phase will involve fine tuning the tools to better interface with trailer surfaces to clean them.
He says once that's been accomplished engineers will begin working on automating the system.
Source: Farmscape