What is A Silo?

Silo is designed for bulk material storage. There are temporary silos and permanent silos for long term storage, depending on the setting. In most people’s option, silo refers to silage or grain silo which is use to store bulk grain and silage in farming communities. In fact, silos can be used to store various bulk materials ranging from cereals to minerals and can be applied to many other fields.

Different Silos styles

Referring to silos, many people come up with tower silos. Actually, silos come in many different styles and tower silo (cylindrical tower) is only one of them. Tower silo can be made from wood, steel, metal, brick, concrete and other materials. Silos can accommodate a lot of materials and are available with a varied height and diameter. Most silos are equipped with complete loading systems to make the loading and unloading automatically.

Temporary Storage – Bunker Silos

Bunker silo is more low-profile when compared with tower silo. It is made of a trench which is usually topped with waterproofing materials. Such silos are generally constructed for temporary or short time storage. Automated loading and unloading systems is also available for bunker silos. Bunker silo also has some advantages. For example, it is better insulated since the earth is a kind of natural insulator. Except for bunker silos, there are also many other temporary silos, such as plastic silos, long tubes and bag silos. These temporary silos are widely used in animal waste storage and excess feedstock storage.

In a word, silo provides a secure, dry and controlled environment for goods. With the silos, the goods can be kept safely on hand until they are needed or be aggregated from a group for easy pickup. For example, multiple farmers might share a large grain silo to store the cereals after harvest so that buyers no longer need to travel from one farm to another to collect the grain. Farmers are compensated at a rate determined by how much grain they loaded into the silo.