Transcript
Speaker: Hello, my name is Stephen Kilger. I'm the managing editor of Feed & Grain Magazine and the host of the Feed & Grain Podcast. I want to thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries.
Speaker: Today's episode is brought to you by the BinWhip from Numat Systems. The powerful dual-impact BinWhip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos without hazardous silo entry.
Speaker: Learn more today at binwhip.com. Today my guests are Jordan Newton, the president of Sonic Air, and Taylor Andrews, director of operations at Sonic Air.
Speaker: Sonicair makes a dust control system that uses fans to create a horizontal air barrier that prevents combustible dust from accumulating on overhead surfaces. It helps reduce housekeeping and the need for manual cleaning in hard to reach spaces.
Speaker: And after a three-year certification process, their fans are now rated for Class II Division I environments, making them suitable for feed mills, grain elevators, and grain processing facilities that handle even the most challenging dusty materials.
Speaker: This technology could finally be the answer to the industry's never-ending battle with dust. I hope you enjoy the interview. If you want to help out with this podcast and are listening in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe.
Speaker: If you're listening online, sign up for the Feeding Gray newsletter and just watch to see when new podcasts drop and to stay up to date with news from all around the industry. Now, on to the show.
Speaker: Hey, thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you guys coming out. I was just on your podcast, so hopefully it wasn't too hard of a lift for you. Yeah, we didn't go too far down the office hallway. So, you know, we just flip sides.
Speaker: i've I've actually been wanting you on the podcast for a while. Sonicare is one of those companies that really started to get in the industry roughly around the same time I did. So I was always fascinated with your product and what it does and what seemed to me to always be this like no brainer solution. to a major problem in the industry, dust control that just not a lot of people were talking about or moving forward with. And that always kind of blew my mind because you guys seem like you have such a cool product, but for anyone who doesn't know, can you guys tell me a little bit about who you are and about Sonic Air and and how it came to be? Sure. I'll start Jordan Newton. I'm the president here at Sonic Air. I've been here for 16 years now. Started when there was three or four of us. So I'm a degreed engineer, mechanical engineering background and I have spent my career
Speaker: in forensic engineering, looking at fires and explosions, including a dust explosion, doing investigations. And then I went to work for underwriters laboratories, testing firefighting equipment, and now here at Sonicare on the fire prevention side. So it went from show up after the fire and explosion and trying to figure out what happened to trying to protect the firefighters amidst the fire events, and then now trying to prevent them from ever happening in the first place.
Speaker: Yeah. i mean your career here, it can drive. That's crazy to think about. Yeah. That's scary. It's been a minute. I'm Taylor Andrews. I'm the director of operations here. So I manage the engineering side of things and then also work with production and supply chain. I like to tell people get the product design delivered and done. We get it in the door, out the door.
Speaker: I came here right out of college. I'm similar to you, Stephen, where I've been at one place the whole time, came in as a degreed mechanical engineer and had done an internship, worked in a wood factory that needs our product and realizing, oh, all of these struggles that we were having and why we were having to close down and why I had to clean all the time it could have been solved with our product, which is cool.
Speaker: I've been here starting in 2019 and have seen us go through different iterations, get into different industries and have loved Something that I never would have imagined working in.
Speaker: Dust. It's crazy how that happens, isn't it? Life works out that way sometimes. And there's always this myth about guys roughly our age where that millennial generation wants to move around in a lot and go to different places. I don't think that's ever really been true. If you can find the right company, you can find the right fit. I think we're as happy to stay put as anybody.
Speaker: So tell me a little bit about... your fans, give me the elevator pitch. What makes Sonic Air's product different than some other kind of dust control method?
Speaker: Our whole goal is to keep things from blowing up. So that's the number one goal and objective is to prevent combustible dust explosions and subsequently automate overhead housekeeping.
Speaker: We want to make it easy so that you don't ever have to put somebody in a scissor lift or a bucket lift to ever go up and do a blow down or manual vacuuming ever again.
Speaker: So that those spaces are continuously protected. There's no dust accumulation. There's no risk. And then you're always in compliance with whatever dust regulations. We're a big proponent of like whatever you do and being in the feed and grain side like you guys are really good at making feed and grain and we don't want you to have to stop doing that. We want you to be able to continue to do the things that you're good at and that make you money.
Speaker: One of the things that doesn't do that is stopping shutting down having a facility closed down because of a citation and so we're here to make sure that you can do the things you're good at. The way that it works is basically the fans go up near the ceiling and they make this pillow of air by constantly pushing air down so that when dust goes up, it can't accumulate up there. it gets immediately pushed back down. Is that right?
Speaker: Yeah, essentially we call it barrier air technology, like a horizontal air curtain, and it puts a lid on the dust. So whatever process you're doing at ground floor at lower levels, it's going to put a lid on it make sure that dust stays at the floor level. You can sweep it up so you never have those accumulations or build up.
Speaker: overhead Yeah, one of our keywords is agglomeration. I'm going to be the nerdy one here. So what we're doing is breaking up thermal currents. and when we put that lid on, the dust has hairy fibers in its makeup because we've got a lid on it. They start to stick together and they get too heavy to stay in that thermal current. And so they fall to the floor. And just like you were saying, they can't get to those hard to reach.
Speaker: Got to shut down to get their places so that you can keep on moving and have it as a part of your day to day housekeeping. I'm a layman in that I don't, I never know anything about anything. I just do my best to learn. But grain dust must behave slightly different than other types of dust, right? Is it lighter? Is it more airy? Because it seems like once that stuff gets up there, boy, is it hard to get down.
Speaker: We work in a lot of different industries. It's kind of unique. It's not the heaviest. It's not the lightest. It's not the stickiest. It's not the driest. It's somewhere in the middle of a lot of dust that we deal with. Once it gets up there, depending on how long it's been sitting there, the moisture content, in the dust, the humidity in the air, it can create a little crust on some of those overhead spaces.
Speaker: Yeah. If you ever go to a feed mill that's a couple of years old, there's always that crust. It's always everywhere. Interesting. What's the stickiest dust? Oh boy. You're asking the real questions. Yeah. Like Jordan was saying, we've done a little bit of everything we fixed some of our equipment too. We'll have customers send them back for some maintenance.
Speaker: My favorite that we see is we work in the paper industry and there's a wet side of that where they're pulping up all of this stuff. And so it turns into this giant paper mache that, but it's not a pinata where you can just bust it off. You have to take ah a paint scraper chisel that stuff off.
Speaker: And then some of the wood stuff where it's got the oils and pulp in it. Fiber board like ah MDF or OSB, there's a resin in the pine wood itself and they add like a Gorilla Glue additive to it. When they press the particle board together under heat and a lot of pressure, it uses that glue to bond it together. When that becomes part of the dust, it's a really sticky, nasty mess. Dog food is another one that came to mind. Oh yes. Because it's got a lot of oils and grease in the product and in the dust and it's really sticky and it's really hard to manage that stuff. Some of the stuff specifically for your industry, like i think about a DDG where some of them have a little bit of a different protein blend in them. And so sometimes those can get sticky.
Speaker: And then also just the process with how they get into a loadout can sometimes have some issues as well. But yeah, those are all the sticky things. Yeah, protein does. Like, I've used protein powder in the past. That stuff really does love to stick together, doesn't it? But that's good to know. I didn't know you guys went to pet food facilities, but that makes sense. I'll have to share this with our sister publication.
Speaker: One of my big crusades for the industry is safety and this labor shortage that has been... rocking the industry for years is not going to let up anytime soon. One of the big time sinks for any facility is housekeeping. As you're stretched thin on staff, you have less time to do it. It's not the most pleasant part of the job to send someone up there and air blast to dust it down and get covered in it. Not to mention all the safety concerns you have to deal with when you
Speaker: do you send someone up into those cavernous pipes and conveying equipment that we have up there. You have to suddenly deal with fall protection and dust and ventilation and all that other kind of fun stuff. So your product always seemed like a really good solution for saving time with your day-to-day maintenance and making your facility safer, not having that accumulation of dust. Can you give your thoughts on that? Do you guys think you offer something that's really unique to the industry that other people don't?
Speaker: I think there's probably not a lot of high school students that are in line to get their diploma and then go, man, I can't wait to go work at the green elevator. I got a new job starting next week and I'm going to push a broom. I'm going to sweep the floors and I'm going to get the air wand and I'm going to blow dust down everywhere and it's going to be all over me.
Speaker: And then I get to go home and take a shower and wash it all off and go back and do it again the next day. I'm getting pumped. Just thinking about it. Especially down in the south where it's 98 degrees in the summer and humid and you're up there in a mask and covered in dust.
Speaker: It's awful. It's a challenge to get people to sign up for that job, but then get them to come back day after day. Create motivation and inspiration and a career path out of that. I'm reminded of a story one grain terminal manager was telling me. He had to fire someone because he found one of their housekeeping staff asleep on the conveyor.
Speaker: He said, you got to go This is a huge safety problem. You can't do this. And that in itself is a challenge. So getting the right people to come in and do this job that is a thankless job, that's a really hard, nasty job, that's a problem. And so that's where we hope we're coming in and trying to help people with that so we can create a better opportunity for people.
Speaker: I think about our other buddy who manages one of the elevators and he always kind of jokes, it's hard enough to find somebody with a pulse to give them a job here. But then telling that person, how you're gonna push a broom, they don't come back. Part of our mission is to create work environments that are cleaner, safer and more efficient.
Speaker: I think we do a good job of it and provide equipment that allows operators that freedom to do the things that they're good at. A lot of times what I will pitch people on It's just you do not need to waste your time doing this. Let us do that dirty work.
Speaker: Yeah. That same elevator operator you're talking about. We asked him what's different about your facility now that you have the fans in place or what are employees notice? And he goes honestly they take them for granted now but it's because they don't have to go up in the overhead spaces. They don't have to go do that part of the dirty job now. They can stay at floor level. They can do it with a broom. They don't have to get the air wands out and the dust mask and all that kind of stuff. and So it really has changed what they're doing in their facility. And he has fewer people on staff now to take care of his housekeeping needs and a safer process so that they're not up there with fall protection, masks and things like that. And creating a hazard by blowing it around with an air wand, another hazard.
Speaker: talk about the perfect conditions for a dust explosion. They often happen while you're up there doing that kind of deep clean. So it involves you having to shut down the entire facility or just take a lot of risks that you shouldn't be taking.
Speaker: Back when I first started, a lot of people didn't have LED bulbs in their facility. So the first time I went to a facility that had a bright open area that was lit with all these LED bulbs, I was like, man, this makes a world of difference. I don't know how every single facility in the country doesn't do this. I talked to the employees about it and Oh yeah, it is what it is. It's what it's supposed to be like, right? And so they do quickly forget about the convenience that they're being given by these products.
Speaker: But the benefits are very tangible, just safety and cleanliness wise. No one wants to work in a dirty environment. No one wants to accidentally... bump into something and have a big plume of dust fall off from the rafter and come down. no one wants to work in that environment. It also leads to pest control problems and all these other things. Can you tell me a little bit more about how the system works? So you say it's automated. So do the fans run when they need to Do you link them up to machinery? so when machinery is running, they're going, are they on all the time? How does that work? And how much does it affect energy costs?
Speaker: Yes. I think that's the correct answer is yes to all of the above. i think at its simplest, the fans rotate 360 degrees and oscillate 90 to 100 degrees.
Speaker: And while they're doing that in that continuous process, it's creating that air barrier. But to get more into the weeds, we do different things because every facility is unique in the feed and grain industry. A lot of you guys are going to run very similarly. But then if you talk about elevators versus crushed plants versus flat storage, you're you're all in that supply chain, but you operate a little bit differently. And so what we do is we set up a control system where you can do things like interlock it with machinery. One of the facility managers that we've worked with runs them while the people are in the building so that they can just clean up in the morning, but they can set the schedules
Speaker: The fan itself is mechanical and that is mainly so that one you don't have to go up and mess around with it. It's going to be set and forget it. And that's the goal because we don't want to introduce this system that is removing labor by adding a system that you have to go and tinker with all the time. We can do all of those things, but the general idea and if you get into NFPA and how it's worded, they are fans for continuous dust control. And so the idea is that you set them, forget them, let them run.
Speaker: The goal would be 24 seven. They are the low amperage system so your energy draw is not going to be significant at all. What we tell people is if you can see dust blowing when the fans are running you're not running them frequently enough.
Speaker: The whole idea just preventing the accumulation before it ever happens. If you're waiting till it builds up and then turn the fans on that's not what we recommend. They need to run at least daily if not continuously during your production process.
Speaker: Especially since the dust blowing is always the most dangerous part. It's the same with moving it around with compressed air or anything else. It's that plume going up. That's how a lot of dust explosion incidents happen is someone hits something, a bunch of dust falls from the ceiling, it causes this cloud and then there's a spike and it just all cascades from there.
Speaker: Yeah, the cloud is always the secondary event and it's always the secondary event that causes the biggest catastrophe. We saw that Didion milling, same thing. They had a mill, i think it was called the gap mill that had an issue in a fireball on the collector on the mill or something like that. And then it just started raining dust out of the ceiling.
Speaker: That's when you had the secondary explosion catastrophic. Because that's just the difference of Something being able to catch on fire and then there being combustion because we're working with combustible dust so it doesn't just light, it explodes. And like we were talking about with Didion, it combusts, shakes the facility, drops stuff from the air, and then it starts all over again. And it's a chain reaction that is catastrophic. It's deadly. One of the biggest issues is the speed at which it happens. We're trained in grade school. If you hear the fire alarm, you get in a single file line and march orderly out to the meeting point out in the schoolyard or whatever. That doesn't happen with a dust explosion. It happens instantly. There is no pull the fire alarm. There is no exit the building. It is fast, fast.
Speaker: Like Taylor said, there's so much fuel in some of these facilities that's readily available. It's it's literally like gunpowder. sitting on overhead surfaces waiting for a match and it is dangerous.
Speaker: I always tell people, you don't want to have to have that call. You do not want to be the one that has to call employees' families and say that something happened. It's so easy to push things off a little bit, especially when we're busy, especially during busy seasons. But that's when accidents happen. And I hate having to report on them. I hate that they are avoidable incidents.
Speaker: There's just no real excuse when life is at stake to not invest more to prevent these kind of things. I always see people that are pushing it off a little bit. waiting a little longer. i don't want to worry about it. We'll dust next week.
Speaker: We'll figure out this problem later. We'll do a deep clean in a couple months. You know that they're just rolling the dice. And that's not a place you want to be when it comes to safety in business. So I'll get off my soapbox. But I really love your product for that. I don't have to think about this as much anymore aspect. It always flabbergasts me that people are so resistant to something that seems so easy.
Speaker: I had somebody tell me once that their facility was more likely to get struck by lightning than have a dust explosion. And I went, okay, maybe you're right. Maybe the probability may be lower, but the devastation is going to be higher if it happens. Yeah, because you're in a giant concrete building and lightning is not going to do anything to you. Dust explosion, I've seen them rip facilities apart.
Speaker: I've been aware of you guys for a long time, but it seems like you've really been pushing into the grain and feed businesses lately. What's motivated that and how good of a fit do you think you guys are? We have been attending the Jeeps event for quite a while. And through that, we got connected with a large grain elevator out in Kansas. And the manager there was adamant that if we got our fans certified for Class 2 Division 1 environments, that they would be the right fit and would work well in his elevator. Yeah.
Speaker: We've already got a class two division two certification. Isn't that enough? And he said, Nope, it's gotta be division one. That's what we use. And we need to have the utmost in safety equipment for our facility. And we went, okay.
Speaker: And so then that's where Taylor comes in. That certification process became the bane of my existence to put it lightly. We showed up to Jeeps and people came by and they're like, oh, this is really cool. And then they were like, what's the rating? We said Div 2 and they're like, uh.
Speaker: Not for this space. For some facilities, Div does meet their actual requirements, but some just have internal policies and we can appreciate that. And so we, when I say we, I mean Taylor worked with UL for years. It was almost three. And so some of that to answer your question is why were you're just coming on the scene more so in the grain industry. We did what we could with the environment so we could get our foot in the door.
Speaker: But getting this Div 1 certification really meant that there's no more excuses. We can work with every facility because for dust, this is the highest safety rating that we can get. or appliance rating is probably more apt on how to state that. so So yeah, we went through a long process where we had to redesign stuff. We had to do all kinds of testing.
Speaker: We had to make a case to UL that this was even possible. And UL is the underwriters laboratory. They use their standards pointing back to NFPA standards, pointing back to OSHA standards and the national electric code to say, yep, this works in this environment. We'll give it a thumbs up.
Speaker: And so when we approached them with Div 2, which was right before I came on board, they were like, Nope, can't do it Fan and dust, bad idea. Not approved. but It was an uphill battle.
Speaker: Got Div 2 approval around 2018, something like that. and then started working on the Class 2 Division 1. Same thing. Gotta be kidding me. You're saying you're going to put a fan in a Class 2 Div 1 environment. There's the potential for a dust cloud. And they're like, you're going to put a fan in that. You're insane. But once we started explaining how the technology works, what the after effects are, the potential to lower the rating of an environment, they started to get on board.
Speaker: Then there was drawings back and forth, angry emails back and forth. And I had to fly out there and show them how it works and explain it and be like, you've got to be on the same page. And then we got the certification. And so from that, we were able to amp up the marketing side and say, all right, guys, we got it for you. You asked, we answered. So here you go.
Speaker: Better come through grain industry. Now we are good for boot pits, scale floors, gallery, flat storage, you name it. Anywhere that there's dust accumulation and manual cleaning and overhead spaces is probably a good place to put a fan. And the harder to reach, the better. because like you don't want to go back there either or if you have to quit what you're doing or not allow trucks in or not allow rails in then we can do that we've had a lot of success throughout the head house and the boot pit and truck loadouts we have a ton of success in those areas and those are easy applications for everybody to try out well you guys are installing them what kind of feedback have you been getting from people
Speaker: I think it's like what we were talking about earlier. It changes their lives instantly, and then it becomes such a part of their operation, their fire prevention and fire protection plan that then they can't do without them.
Speaker: They didn't have it before, but now they definitely aren't staffed up and equipped to do it as a manual process. So they are now reliant and dependent on the service that the fans are providing for them.
Speaker: Very cool. So for anyone who wants more information from you guys, where should they go? Where can they find you? A couple of places. Sonicair.com is the easiest place. And then we have a YouTube channel. It's the dust safety channel.
Speaker: And so you can check us out there. We've got tons of videos and information. And we also have our podcast there, the on air podcast with Jordan and Taylor. that You can hear just more of us bantering on about all things dust and some great interviews and folks coming on the podcast. We're pretty adamant that we know that we are The new and emerging technology, especially for the grain industry. And so we want to put all of our cards on the table. We want you to understand what you're dealing with. And that's where our video content is super helpful. We just try to lay it all out there. You don't know what these are. You've never seen one of these fans. It's not like a dust collector. It's not a dryer at your house or anything like that. we
Speaker: Put out the content so that you can figure out what we're doing. One of our most viewed videos is don't these fans just blow the dust around because that's everybody's first question. Even coming into the industry, I was like, think it's just going to blow the dust around.
Speaker: yeah I encourage our listeners to go check that out. There might be one young-ish intrepid grain industry reporter on there giving his thoughts on the industry. We'll link to all that stuff in the show notes so you can find them.
Speaker: Guys, thank you so much for coming on here. i hope you can come back again and that everyone in the industry eventually just stops dealing with this whole dust problem, at least up in the rafters. Absolutely. That's our goal. Yeah, thank you for having us. Yeah, it's great. It's fun.
Speaker: Thanks. Happy to do it. And thank you everyone out there for listening. Until next time, stay safe.
