Delivery and Adoption of Nitrogen/Low Oxygen and Nitrogen + Phosphine Technology for the Management of Grain Storage Pests in Commercial Silos

Abstract

Nitrogen technology has been developed as a complementary technology with fumigants, for control of key pests in Australian grain storages. However, market feedback from industry was its cost which remained as a barrier of uptake. Therefore, a commercial scale trial was set up using advanced membrane technology to assist industry overcome operational and the cost barriers for the uptake of the technology. A new generation membrane technology was sourced from Changshun Anda, a China-based company. The unit was deployed at the CBH grain port of Kwinana, Western Australia to compare performance against an older nitrogen generation technology (Pressure Swing Absorbance/PSA). To meet the strict Australian standards operating conditions the port the unit was upgraded by Changshun Anda specialist team. The target benchmark was set to $0.50 per tonne of grain (the high-end cost of a phosphine fumigation). Research demonstrated an operational cost for the older PSA technology of $2.43 per tonne of grain. The technology also displayed operational limitations in its ability to generate and maintain the required level of nitrogen purity necessary to provide insect control (99%). In comparison, the generation of nitrogen using membrane technology cost $0.99 per tonne of grain. Other performance gains were generation of required nitrogen purity within 4.5 days of operation and ability to maintain purity for the required 14 days to provide full control of pests.

Keywords

• grain storage
• stored grain insect management
• nitrogen storage
• pressure swing adsorption (psa) nitrogen generators
• membrane separation (ms) nitrogen generators