Alfalfa Pellet Production Line in New Zealand

First, use an alfalfa bale breaker to unpack the intact dry alfalfa bales, loosen the compacted forage, and remove the binding twine. Simultaneously, cut the long alfalfa into short grass segments to reduce the burden on the downstream hammer mill and prevent long alfalfa grass from tangling around the hammers. Then, transport the chopped alfalfa segments via a belt conveyor, and establish an intermediate buffer storage area.

We install a single 2 m³ buffer hopper to hold the chopped alfalfa hay and feed it to the hammer mill stably and evenly. Fit a magnetic separator onto the hopper’s discharge belt conveyor to remove iron nails and metal debris, protecting downstream equipment from damage. Then, feed the cleaned alfalfa segments into the alfalfa hammer mill to grind them into fine grass powder suitable for pelleting. The dust removal section may generate a large amount of dust, so we designed a two-stage dust removal system consisting of a cyclone separator and a bag filter to eliminate workshop dust, prevent raw material waste, and fully recycle collected powder. The pulverized alfalfa hay powder is conveyed and lifted into the pelleting section.

The pulverized alfalfa hay is lifted into a 2m³ buffer storage silo. The silo is equipped with a level sensor that automatically replenishes the material when the level is low and pauses pulverization when the level is high to prevent overflow and ensure a continuous and stable supply of material to the alfalfa pellet mill. The core pelleting equipment is a ring die alfalfa pellet mill, which compresses the hay into compact alfalfa pellets. The pellet mill is equipped with a single-layer conditioner to improve palatability, ensure thorough sterilization, and guarantee feed safety.

Freshly pressed alfalfa pellets are very hot and need to be cooled to room temperature as soon as possible to harden the pellets and stabilize the moisture content to 10%-12%. The cooled alfalfa pellets are then fed into a vibrating screen to screen out the finished pellets, separating the broken pieces and powder. The broken pieces and hay powder are recycled and reprocessed.

Qualified alfalfa pellets are stored in a 1 m³ small finished product silo, automatically feeding the packaging machine according to the packaging speed. The automatic packaging machine can automatically weigh and sew the bags, requiring only manual assistance in bagging. It supports 25-50kg packaging bags and can also be used with ton bags. The packaged finished products are directly transferred to the warehouse by forklift.