At the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette rivers sits Columbia Grain’s Terminal 5 export facility, one of the most automated and integrated grain facilities in the world. While the facility has been updated and expanded twice over the last 30 years, the dust collection system in the original operation has remained the same. That’s about to change. Columbia Grain is beginning a project to optimize their system, which will significantly boost energy efficiency and also earn a healthy cash incentive from Energy Trust of Oregon.

“It’s time to upgrade because this is 30-year-old equipment,” says Randy Cartmill, vice president at this leading world grain exporter. “We’ll get better technology and energy efficiency.”

Rail cars and barges deliver lentils, wheat, oats and other grains to Terminal 5 where it is cleaned, stored and mixed, then loaded onto ships for delivery overseas. Moving all this grain around generates a lot of dust, so the original facility has five dust collectors.

PGE Customer Technical Services group, serving as the contractor for the Energy Trust’s Production Efficiency program, conducted a technical review of the facility and developed a plan. Columbia Grain will rebuild three of the dust collectors and replace one completely. The fifth will be removed from the system and used only for backup.

The project is in the preliminary design phase at this point, but the company aims to move forward with the work this summer. Once complete, the upgraded equipment is projected to save 799,386 kWh of electricity annually and earn an Energy Trust incentive of $119,907, which will reduce the payback period by 2.5 years.

If you would like to know how your company can save energy with compressed air systems, talk to your PGE representative or plan to attend our free Blower and Fan Systems class on May 14.