Mothballed Flour Mill

The mill is to be demolished to build houses instead. I had a chance to look at it.

 

This place is very interesting for fans of industrial tourism. Here you can see all the stages of flour production as in a working factory. The structure of the mill includes two mills (old and new), grain silos, control rooms, and hundreds of meters of conveyors. The old mill has old equipment and is currently being sold for scrap. Let's not linger here and see all the stages of production in the newer mill. In the old mill, we'll see the top three floors.

The conveyor from the silos is in a gallery between the two buildings high above the ground.

In the middle, there's a tower, possibly a storage silo.

The first mill. The conveyor passes through it in transit, with grain that can be shipped to any section.

The conveyor starts above the silos.

The storage of grain - silos. Grain enters or is taken in with pipes.

Somewhere wheat was spilled through a hole.

So, what makes flour flour? For bakers, confectioners, bakery technologists, and ordinary people, white flour of the highest, first, or second grade is of interest. To make it, it is necessary to separate the central part of the wheat grain. The remainder of the grain will be used for bran or mixed fodder. The process of preparing and milling grains into flour consists of a number of operations located on eight floors of the production shop. The uppermost floor is a ventilation system and a conveyor for the grain. It is poured down and on each floor it undergoes processing.

First, the grain is cleaned of small objects like stones and metals on a coarse sieve.

Then on the smaller sieves.

After that, the grains are moistened and left to rest for a certain amount of time. Then, the grains are sent upstairs again, where the grains begin to be crushed. First, they are crushed and the husks are separated.

Note the vertical pipes, I'll talk about them later.

Grain pipe.

Machines for sifting out the central parts of the grains, from which the flour is made.

Milling area. Here are the rolling machines that grind the grains.

Each machine consists of two rollers with coarse and fine cutting.

What comes out after the rollers already looks like flour.

The semi-product is sent up those very pipes. Why upstairs? Because flour is explosive. If it explodes, it's better that the top floor will be destroyed, than the whole building.

Let's go back upstairs. Those air pipes suck the flour upstairs.

Six pumps per shaft.

Very photogenic rows.

The main octopus.

The floors below are the sifting machines.

They are designed to separate the flour into grades.

Inside it looks like this. A multitude of sieves with decreasing cells from top to bottom. Only the highest-grade flour particles reach the bottom.

Screening machine assemblies vibrate as they work, rotating around their bases and shutting down as the cells are filled. Then their work is picked up by the neighboring unit, and flour fractions are sucked out of the spent cells.

The sifted flour goes to packaging according to its grade. It would be a mistake not to look into the mill's control panel.

Despite the mill is not working, management still hopes to resume production and keeps the equipment mothballed.

That's all.

Until we meet again!