Alfalfa Seed Plant

Bratney delivered a new conditioning facility for a global leader in alfalfa seed research and development. In true turn-key fashion, Bratney's process engineers and construction teams handled everything from conceptual design through construction and plant start-up.

Project Background

Challenged by the local landscape and running the project on an operational site, Bratney's project management team worked closely with the customer operations and management to ensure their existing operations could run safely and uninterrupted. Due to the local site conditions, extensive site preparation was required including:

Demolition of an existing building
Remediation of contaminated soils
Local blasting of buried rock shelves
Construction of an underground stormwater retention system
Specialized building foundations with rock anchors.

Another interesting aspect of the project was an innovative process flow. The customer frequently cleans different varieties of alfalfa seeds, and consequently can't have any cross-contamination. Bratney designed two mirrored seed cleaning lines, each with a capacity of 5,000 lbs. per hour, allowing the customer flexibility to run two products independently or one product at twice the capacity.

In addition to the 10,000 sq. ft. processing tower, Bratney also designed and constructed a 100,000 sq. ft. storage warehouse and a separate 8,000 sq. ft. office space.

Enclosed Truck Receiving Lane

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Cimbria Pre-Cleaner

Remove large foreign material to protect downstream equipment and prepare product for precision cleaning steps.

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Cimbria Super-Cleaner

Precision cleaning step to remove over and under sized kernels along with unique aspiration system to remove low density foreign materials.

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Cimbria Indents

Length separation step to remove any remaining sticks, stems and pods.

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Cimbria Cleaner

2nd cleaning high-quality screening to remove split kernels and small fines.

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Cimbria Gravity Table

Density separation step to remove low-density split and broken kernels as well disease and insect damaged kernels - simple to operate with honeycomb deck for even air distribution and fans that move with the deck.

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Cimbria SEA Color Sorter

Optical sorting for precise removal of the smallest defects as well as removal of off color or incorrectly sized kernels.

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Color Sorter Rerun Conveyer

2nd pass color sorting of first round rejects to reclaim any good product caught in first pass rejects.

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Cimbria Treating & Coating System

Batch or continuously treating systems and drying conveyors for pulse seed producers.

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Project Scope

conceptual design and scope development
process engineering
facility design
project management
construction management
millwright services
equipment selection
equipment installation
facility start-up and commissioning
operator training

Project Details

Turn-Key Alfalfa Seed plant, warehouse and office
100,000 sq. ft. storage warehouse
10,000 sq. ft. processing plant
8,000 sq. ft. office space
Underground storm water retention system
Specialized building foundations with rock anchors
Two 5,000 lbs. per hour seed cleaning lines to run two products simultaneously without cross-contamination
Extensive site clearing, including demolition of an existing building, contaminated soils remediation and blasting of buried rock shelves
The project occurred at an existing facility, extra care was taken so the customer could maintain full operation during construction of the new plant
Conceptual design started in March 2014, construction finished in August of 2015