Hi Short answer is no.

Unfortunately , silos are a key part of the flow sheet and business and taking one offline for cleaning and inspection becomes a logistical challenge.

Nothing beats a visual inspection.

I would first look at yr situations

Do you have a design issue or history

Have you had issues before.

Then, an inspection is going to be required - survey first and tehn repairs later

If you have not had issues but would like to be sure, then look at a 2 step inspection - prelliminary with remote access and then one more detailed.

Note that if you find an issue, then you will need another outage to do the repairs.

Cheers

James ■

As Mr. Morrish has described so so well is very true.

Other than ground penetrating radar inspection with a wheeled radar cart

winched up the silos exterior, the visual method is the much better method.

Short of complete silo discharge of material you will not be able to safely inspect and catalog any evident damages in the silo without risking an explosion in a fuel rich environment like a sugar silo.

flooding the silo with dry nitrogen or carbon dioxide gas is possible but the personell will be frequired to wear SCBA equipment and full body harness even using an inspection basket with a wire winch and the close inspection of the silo walls will be problematic if a winched basket is used for this as well if the basket creates a spark in an area/void not flooded by the supression gas.

The simpler route would be to wash the interior of the silo with a steam cleaning system which will offer complete sanitary cleaning and remove any loose paint which is a problem if the interior was painted with food grade paint.

And you may want to consider the use of a slick lining material for the silos interior that is a food grade material to prevent any build ups in future. The lining material is easily installed with hand tools but the silo needs to empty and the walls cleaned repaired with mortar and then painted with food grade paint and dryed in any case prior to its installation using scaffolding and aluminum staging for work platforms as the scaffold is extended in height.

lzaharis ■

i woiuld asses product amount then giro-whip any hangups to make safe and enter via rope access and video/photo survey for inspection via your engineers

please see our website

www.intechenvronmental.com

all rope access cxarried out under irata regulations we have carried out structural surveys at heigth for many companies ■