Studies on the Location Planning for Agricultural Structures (II)

On the Influences of Grain Dust Dispersion from Paddy Drying and Processing Facilities to the Surrounding Area

Abstract

The environmental problem of paddy drying and processing facilities (so-called “rice-center”; RC), especially, the influences of dispersion of grain dust to the surrounding area were investigated. The results obtained were summarized as follows;
1) The concentrations of dust in RC were higher than the environmental quality standard for the protection of workers' health and safety.
2) At outdoor of RC, the emitting dust from the dust control system were widely dispersed to surrounding area.
3) From the questionaire to the neighbors of RC, it was proved that grain dust and machine noise from RC had occurred many troubles, and existence of RC itself resulted in excessive problem for most of the neighbors.
4) It was provided that the area influenced with dust dispersion was correlated with the distance from RC and the angle composed of main wind direction and the line of RC to surrounding houses. This correlated line was named as limit line of dust influence, which depended on the types of dust collecting and processing system (shown in Fig. 5).
5) The area influenced with noise was depended on only the distance from the facilities to houses, and the extent influenced over was estimated as far as about 300 meters.