March 1996
Cyclone mill may help foster value-added ventures
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Prairie Grains is the
official publication of
the Minnesota
Association of
Wheat Growers,
North Dakota Grain
Growers Association,
South Dakota Wheat,
Inc., and the
Minnesota Barley
Growers Association.
Further, the size of grain components can be controlled better with a cyclone mill, and it can produce flour components more cheaply than other milling processes.
"The kernel is not a single unit structure. If you want just the starch or bran, there's an advantage to breaking the kernel along its natural lines. You get better separation of the components," says Frank Rowley, the Valley Center, Kansas wheat grower who developed and patented the gradient force mill.
A different type of milling process was first proposed to Rowley in 1975 by a friend whose special dietary needs were not being met by conventional processes. A TV show shortly thereafter about tornadoes sparked an idea for a design.
"I thought that if I could create a tornado effect, I could control the grind," says Rowley. After about 18 years of trial and error, he now has five small working mills that render the milling process he was after.
One of Rowley's mills is now located at the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI) in Crookston, Minn. The trailer-mounted, stainless-steel, 100-horsepower unit was purchased for $93,000 last year by AURI and the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council, Minnesota Barley Council, Minnesota Corn Council, Red River Valley Co-op Power Association, and American Crystal Sugar.
"It's in AURI's hands for experimental purposes, to see what the mill can do," says Gary Fulcher, professor of food science at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.
An expert on milling processes, Fulcher was an initiator for acquiring the mill.
He says that less damage to the separated components of the kernel in the gradient-force milling process will translate into a better end-product, whether it be vital wheat gluten from wheat, oil from soybeans, or ethanol from corn.
The gradient-force mill may also prove to be useful for other agricultural processes, not just milling. For example, it may be used in the process of making composite building materials out of wheat straw. It can be used to process herbs. The mill may also be used to more efficiently segregate starch from corn germ and bran for ethanol production.
Further, it is able to process or recycle materials such as wood chips, glass, newspaper and other waste products with little or no modification.
A primary objective is to use the cyclone mill as a tool for identifying ways in which certain parts of different crops may be segmented into various markets, says Gordon Sonstelie, a past president of the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers who farms near Winger, Minn. Sonstelie works part-time for AURI in the Crookston lab, demonstrating the mill's potential.
The cyclone milling technology may in the future make farm processing plants more efficient, an important factor in their success. "It might reduce the cost of producing ethanol, which would be important if federal support for ethanol is lost," Sonstelie says, "or less damage during grain milling might help a snack food processor."
Ultimately, the cyclone milling technology might make it easier for farmer cooperatives and value-added ventures to get off the ground, or make co-ops and ventures in their infancy more efficient, and thus more profitable.
"This is not something that's going to totally revolutionize the milling industry. But it could help decentralize processing, and open a whole new marketing niche in processing and shipping grain on the basis of component products," says Rowley.