K-State Expands Ag Research Facilities

MANHATTAN - Oct 15/04 - SNS -- Kansas State University held ground breaking ceremonies for its new $6.8 million Teaching and Research Flour Mill today; and dedicated the university's Bioprocessing and Industrial Value Added Program (BIVAP) building that was completed last spring.

The mill will be a state-of-the-art teaching and research facility for dry grain processing, said Virgil Smail, head of the K-State Department of Grain Science and Industry. It will be a commercial-type, 525-hundredweight-per-day flour mill and is expected to be operational by the fall of 2006..

It will serve as a standard mill processing facility, while also allowing flow and equipment changes that support research in the milling process. The building will house a separate specialty mill for grains such as corn, grain sorghum and similar grains. An adjacent area will provide for grain storage and cleaning.

An area between the two mills will allow for installation, testing and removal of various pieces of processing equipment. The equipment can be integrated into either of the milling systems for research purposes.

Attached to the mill building will be a wheat quality laboratory for evaluation of plant breeder experimental lines in the wheat variety development program. The lab also will be used to evaluate commercial varieties of wheat and analyze their flour characteristics and milling performance.

Companies donating equipment to the flour mill project include:

* Buhler, Inc., of Minneapolis, Minn., and Uzwil, Switzerland, which is furnishing milling equipment and the engineering design for the new mill, as well as underwriting a new department faculty position.

* Kice Industries, Inc., of Wichita, Kan., which is donating all pneumatic conveying and aspiration systems for the new mill.

* Research Products Co. of Salina, Kan., which is providing all of the flour enrichment-addition system feeders and related equipment, and all required enrichment products used by the new mill on an ongoing basis.

* Great Western Manufacturing Co., Inc., of Leavenworth, Kan., is donating a series of sifters and agitators.

Once built, the mill will be the third of five buildings that will eventually make up K-State's new Grain Science Complex. The Bioprocessing and Industrial Value Added Program (BIVAP) building and the International Grains Program Conference Center have been completed.

Two other buildings, a feed mill and a teaching and research building that will house K-State's bakery science and management program are also planned for the 16-acre site across from the university's football complex on Kimball Avenue in Manhattan.