Sand Separation Systems

Sand is often referred to as the "gold standard" for freestall bedding material, providing cows with the most comfortable resting surface. Sand also contains little or no organic material, which is important to keep bacteria levels low. Dry sand wicks moisture away from resting animals. It helps to clean hooves and provides great traction on the alleys. Sand ultimately ends up in the manure as cows move into and out of the stalls. This sand and manure mixture has low flowability and pumpability and is highly abrasive. These challenges make it difficult to manage with standard-duty processing equipment.

McLanahan has developed a complete line of sand handling and separation equipment to tackle the tough job of processing sand-laden manure. Augers have been developed to move manure from the barns to a processing facility and storage. Abrasion-resistant pumps provide pumping solutions for dilute slurries. Manure separation equipment helps producers manage their sand-free manure effluent, and sand separation equipment removes a high percentage of the sand from the manure. This recovered sand has little organic content for reuse back in the stalls. The remaining manure effluent is virtually sand-free and can be processed further or pumped to a storage location.

How Sand Separation Systems Work

Once bedding sand becomes mixed with the cow manure in the alleys, the challenge of handling that manure increases substantially. This manure mixture can no longer be pumped with traditional pumps or flow by gravity. It either has to be pushed into a tank, vacuumed from the alleys and dumped into a tank, conveyed with augers or flumed with water. The design of a Sand Separation System typically involves the complete manure system, beginning in the barns where manure is scraped from the alleys and ending in the manure storage.

The proper design of the system begins with a careful analysis of the manure conveyance system. Undiluted manure from a scraped alley, which is pushed, augered or vacuumed, is separated with a different system than manure, which is flushed or flumed down the barn. Once the proper Sand Separation System is selected for the dairy and their management needs, a conceptual layout is proposed. Once a design is agreed upon, more details are added to the design until the final drawings are produced. Complete engineered and P.E. stamped drawings are available when necessary.

The McLanahan Sales and Design team works with the dairy producer, other engineering firms, local contractors and government officials to design a system best suited for the dairy.

Why McLanahan Sand Separation Systems

McLanahan pioneered the effort of mechanical sand manure separation and continues to lead the way in providing dairy producers with economical solutions for sand recovery and reuse. They were the first to provide a commercially available mechanical separation solution. They were the first to provide sand recovery rates high enough that the sand effluent could be used in a digester system. They were also the first to provide dewatering and drying solutions to produce a sand that is dry and pathogen free.

McLanahan equipment is designed and built not only to last a long time under harsh, abrasive working environments, it is built to be easily serviced with minimal downtime. All machines use a unique combination of wear-resistant metals, rubbers and urethanes located in strategic areas so they can be easily and quickly replaced. Many parts are stocked at their warehouses and at dealers located around the world to provide the ultimate in after-sale support.

McLanahan employs a team of engineers and sales and customer service personnel whose primary focus is providing cutting-edge bedding solutions to the dairy industry. These bedding solutions allow dairy producers to minimize bedding and manure management costs in order to maximize milk production and ultimately profits.