Bidragon Steel Silos
Steel silo supplier — agricultural, industrial, storage and environmental silos

Silo Selection Guide

Selecting a silo starts with the material and the handling line, not with a catalogue size. The material decides the flow behaviour, the discharge method and the protection requirement. The handling line decides the infeed and outfeed arrangements. The site decides the footprint, the height limit, the foundation and the installation method. This guide works through those decisions in order, and it ends with the products on this site whose specifications are confirmed in inquiry rather than published as standard figures.

Flat bottom, hopper bottom or elevated

A flat bottom silo needs full support from a level ground surface, and the ground design is decided by the stored material. Flat bottom silos are described on this site as a common long-term storage arrangement, especially for grain and feed, and a flat bottom air slide can be bolted to embedded ground parts or fixed directly to the silo bottom. For cement, fly ash and similar materials that need a fluidisation system, the flat bottom silo is generally presented as the first choice in the product documentation, as a recommendation rather than a performance guarantee.

A hopper bottom silo is chosen where complete emptying matters. The documented configuration includes a 45-degree cone bottom for granular products in general and a 60-degree cone bottom for poorly flowing powders, with cones designed specifically to the customer's requirements and the material situation. A hopper bottom needs support for the cone, and for large-diameter industrial silos the cone is supported by the silo bottom floor slab to reduce risk.

An elevated silo provides discharge height for gravity flow and is presented for small grain storage and large commercial operations, including feed, beans, corn, rice, wheat and cement storage and grain processing. The documented capacity range for grain elevator silos on the elevated silo page is 4 to 1450 tonnes, and that range must not be confused with the 6,500-tonne single-silo figure published for spiral silos in general.

Spiral, bolted or corrugated construction

Spiral silos are formed on site from steel coil by a forming machine such as the SM40. Bolted silos are assembled panel by panel with high-strength bolts, with all parts boxed for transport. Corrugated galvanized steel silos are assembled panel by panel from corrugated plate. The choice depends on transport, site access, installation resources and the material, and it is settled during the inquiry process. Bolted and corrugated silos on this site share the same documented diameter and capacity figures, but they are different structures and are kept as separate products.

Specifications to be confirmed in inquiry

The following products are listed on this site by name and category only, without a detail page and without published specifications. Their specifications are to be confirmed in inquiry, and no figure from another product on this site should be applied to them:

More generally, any value that is not listed on a product page on this site — including capacity, diameter, material grade, coating, delivery scope and price — is a project-specific value to be confirmed in writing during the inquiry process. That applies even where a similar product on this site does list a value, because silo configurations are project-specific.

Related pages

Request a quotation for this product. Specifications that are not listed on this page, including capacity, dimensions and delivery scope, are confirmed per project through the inquiry form. Send an inquiry →