(194b) De-Risking and Scale-up of Mixing Baffles for Batch Corn Seed Production

Seed treatment is an efficient method of delivering formulated crop protection products where they are needed, from germination through seedling emergence and beyond. Batch processing of seed treatments is a critical unit operation within corn seed production, particularly in North America. One of the key challenges has long been chemical residue retention on the equipment itself, requiring manual cleaning by seed production site personnel. Improving the industrial hygiene of these operations is therefore a priority.

In this presentation, we describe a new commercial-scale baffle design based on pilot-scale prototyping and calibrated DEM model development to de-risk the scaleup. In-silico design testing is performed using DEM to identify the best design possible that retains mixing performance while managing baffle surface area and enhancing the projected self-cleaning performance of the mixing process. The new baffle design streamlines the cleaning process and enables additional self-cleaning capabilities while retaining strong mixing performance for corn seeds. Statistical estimators of the active ingredient distribution are taken as the measure of mixing performance, while assessments of the chemical residue “build-up” are based on cleaning time and gravimetric residue retention.