Header fires: Horsham Hydraulics designs prevention system

A HORSHAM business has come up with a new system to prevent fires during harvest, particularly from the fine dust of a legume crop.

Blow me down: Richard Nagorcka with the Tornado Harvester Air Flow System, which helps to prevent header fires. The fan system blows air on to the susceptible areas of the harvester, removing dust that would otherwise accumulate. Picture: Dannika Bonser

A HORSHAM business has come up with a new system to prevent fires during harvest, particularly from the fine dust of a legume crop.

Horsham Hydraulics’ Richard Nagorcka and his team started to look for ways to prevent the potentially devastating accidents after a farmer came to them mid-harvest in 2016.

“The farmer had a lot of trouble with fires starting in his harvester that year and he wanted us to look at ways to develop a fan system to remove the dust that builds up and causes the fires,” Mr Nagorcka said.

“2016 was a perfect storm of good, heavy crops — particularly legumes, chick peas, lentils and beans that produce a very fine dust — which can lead to a lot of accumulation around the areas of the machine that get very hot.

“The fires are caused by that dust accumulating and smouldering, then dropping off onto other ledges.”

After five or six versions of the first prototype, taking eight months, Mr Nagorcka said the system was ready to take to market.

“The hardest thing to get right was getting the right type of air hose that was flexible enough and could stand up to the heat,” he said.

What they came up with was the Tornado Harvester Airflow System, a hydraulically-driven fan that blows air on to the susceptible areas of the machine through six to eight outlets, removing the dust from the volatile areas where dust accumulates.

The system is monitored and controlled from within the cab, Mr Nagorcka said.

“It is fairly adaptable to most machines — so far we have done Case, John Deere, New Holland and Claas.”

Horsham Hydraulics is now working on setting up a distribution network across Australia, through machinery dealers, and have already sold 30 systems to farmers in the mainland grain growing states.

“I don’t know of any fires that have started when farmers have been using our system and one of the biggest benefits is that the machine is cleaner, so they don’t have to spend as much time cleaning down, so productivity is improved,” he said.

“The price is around $16,000 fitted, and maintenance is minimal. Most of the interest so far has come from people growing a lot of legumes and contractors.

“As far as we know, ours is the only commercial product of its kind on the market. We have been successful in developing it because we persisted and were driven to find a solution for the problem.”