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The barge stowage exam kit’s rotating video camera shown attached to the corner of a barge hatch with a specially designed mount. Photos by Seedburo Equipment Co.
Barge stowage exams are a routine part of operations at barge terminal elevators. Under federal regulations involving domestic and export grain, empty barge holds must be inspected before loading while docked at barge terminals to make sure no residues from previous cargoes remain inside, whether another load of grain or even a potentially hazardous contaminant such as fertilizer.
Inspections are conducted by employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS), or designated third-party agencies. Even without federal rules, many grain handling companies also require stowage exams.
However, performing these exams can be time-consuming and even hazardous for FGIS or designated agency employees.
“When working on barges during inclement weather, snow, rain, or even morning dew will cause the surface to be slippery,” says Linsey Moffit-Tobin, quality controller with Eastern Iowa Grain Inspection Service, Davenport, IA (563-343-7434). She notes that in some cases, personnel have fallen into open holds or have fallen off of the barge into the water. (Eastern Iowa Grain Inspection is the designated agency for eastern Iowa, northern Illinois, and all of Wisconsin except the Twin Ports.)
Even without those hazards, stowage examinations are a time-consuming process, and some terminals can have multiple barges docked at once.
Dan Jamison, team leader with the mid-Mississppi elevators for Cargill Inc. (563-324-2114), says the barge dock at the company’s Bettendorf, IA terminal is 400 feet out into the Mississippi River. (Cargill acquired the Bettendorf terminal, formerly known as the River Gulf Terminal, at the end of September 2019.) “Examiners had to climb up and down switchback stairs elevating 90 feet and traverse three catwalks to reach the dock,” Jamison says.
The Cargill terminal at Bettendorf is the first to use a new barge stowage exam kit developed by Eastern Iowa Grain Inspection with the assistance of two outside engineering firms. The kit, which allows for remote examination of barge holds using a video camera and intranet software, is being distributed throughout the United States by Seedburo Equipment Co., Des Plaines, IL (312-738-3700).
“This is a spinoff of technology that has been in use by many rail loaders for a number of years,” says Seedburo President Tom Runyon. “This was done with a video camera mounted in the loadout shed positioned so that the rail terminal personnel could view inside railcars remotely.”
The challenge at a barge terminal is that barges contain multiple holds, often with more than one barge at a dock, and an exam would require numerous cameras and high-intensity lighting, if a remote exam were to be done in the same way as a rail terminal.
Eastern Iowa Grain Inspection took a different approach in developing a stowage exam kit starting about two years ago. Instead of multiple cameras, the agency developed a single portable kit with one camera that could rotate 360 degrees and a specially designed mount that attaches to the corner of a hatch. The rotation allows the camera to examine the entire hold.
The entire kit fits into a backpack that can be stored in a small dockside shed. Terminal personnel, who are trained to work safely on barge decks and have the appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), can install the camera and mount in a few minutes and move it from one barge to another. Stowage examiners need not venture beyond the main elevator control to perform the examination remotely on a viewscreen.
FGIS gave its approval to the new kit with a Program Notice dated Aug. 8, 2019. The Notice includes a detailed procedure on how to perform a stowage exam with this equipment.
According to Runyon, the barge stowage exam kit has been selected for the Idea Exchange program during GEAPS Exchange 2020 March 21-24 in Minneapolis, MN.
Reprinted from Grain Journal November/December 2019 Issue
