Fast onion drying
If you are drying onions with outside air, the unpredictable weather is not going to make things easy for you. Outside air that is too cold and humid will prevent the onion neck from drying quickly enough. This increases the risk of head rot. On the other hand, if it is too warm, the neck dries too quickly. Another risk is if an onion cannot release its energy, the remaining moisture in the onion cannot be released and the onion will begin to spoil.
Equans has therefore developed a clever way of drying and storing onions: condensation drying. This means that you are no longer at the mercy of Mother Nature’s whims, but have full control over the drying process. The system extracts moisture from the air through condensation and discharges it directly outside via a drain pipe. No matter how the onions come off the land, within a day of harvesting, the adhering moisture is gone and the onions can start drying. Because drying is guaranteed to continue 24 hours a day, the neck is dry enough within a few days. Not too slow, not too fast. There is still enough space in the neck to allow the energy from within the onion to escape.
Do you want to control the conditions for drying, heating and storing onions? Then choose condensation drying.
Request a free information brochureHeating and cooling of onions
The Equans onion storage system allows you to heat onions after the drying phase, without using gas heaters. Heating the air is done with extreme precision, using the heat given off by the onions themselves. Clever and good for your wallet. You can also raise the temperature using a fraction of the electricity generated by solar panels, for example.
You decide how to cool the onions by controlling the desired conditions: from the core temperature of the onion to the temperature, humidity and CO2 levels in the storage room. This allows you to cool the onions to the desired temperature as quick as the onion can tolerate, but above all in a controlled and gradual way.
Stable storage conditions
After cooling, the trick is to maintain the quality of your onions for as long as possible. By keeping the temperature and humidity stable in closed storage, onions are comfortably within their skin, remain calm and of good quality. Whether you choose box storage or bulk storage, you are guaranteed a high quality product with less storage loss. Your onions will come out as good, or even better as when they went into storage.
If you opt for crate storage, there is no need to invest in forced ventilation. This is because the drying unit has already been designed to use the row of crates as a suction wall. When this is done, the crates are placed under the evaporators, which are already equipped with ventilation. By equipping the evaporator fans with the same air volume and pressure build-up as the fans in a suction wall, you don’t need to spend another euro on a supporting ventilation system.
Sustainable and financially attractive
Mechanical onion storage keeps the temperature constant throughout the storage season and when required reuses the heat from the cooling process. You therefore benefit from lower energy consumption. Because the system does not use gas or chemical refrigerants, your CO2 emissions are significantly lower. This increases your chances of winning supply contracts from increasingly environmentally conscious customers.
