Wiktionary
n. (context agriculture North America English) A large structure for the storage of grain. It is more specialized than a regular granary in that in uses an elevating mechanism to hold the grain in one of many different bins, and that it it designed to fill large trucks and train cars for shipping grain in bulk.
Wikipedia
In the grain trade, a grain elevator is a tower containing a bucket elevator or a pneumatic conveyor, which scoops up grain from a lower level and deposits it in a silo or other storage facility. In most cases, the term "grain elevator" also covers the entire elevator complex (an example of pars pro toto), including receiving and testing offices, weighbridges, storage facilities etc. It may also mean organizations that operate or control several individual elevators, in different locations. In Australia the term grain elevator refers to the lifting mechanism only (see "usage" below).
Prior to the advent of the grain elevator, grain was usually handled in bags rather than in bulk (large quantities of loose grain). However, Dart's Elevator was a major innovation. It was invented by a merchant named Joseph Dart and an engineer named Robert Dunbar during 1842–43, in Buffalo, New York. Using the steam-powered flour mills of Oliver Evans as their model, they invented the marine leg, which scooped loose grain out of the hulls of ships and elevated it to the top of a marine tower.
Early grain elevators and bins were often constructed of framed or cribbed wood, and were prone to fire. Grain elevator bins, tanks and silos are now usually constructed of steel or reinforced concrete. Bucket elevators are used to lift grain to a distributor or consignor, from where it falls through spouts and/or conveyors and into one of a number of bins, silos or tanks in a facility. When desired, silos, bins and tanks are emptied by gravity flow, sweep augers and conveyors. As grain is emptied from bins, tanks and silos it is conveyed, blended and weighted into trucks, railroad cars or barges, and shipped to grain wholesalers, exporters and/or local end-users, such as flour mills, breweries and ethanol or alcohol distilleries.
Usage examples of "grain elevator".
The TDX grain elevator stood along one side of the slip, a series of off-white ten-story-high cylinders full of wheat, soybeans, and various kinds of agricultural pellets.
Conspicuous on deck she had Vac-U-Vators for Odessa, powerful suction machines, like vacuum cleaners, for sucking wheat out of the hold of a ship and straight into a grain elevator.
He had just paid for the monkey chow himself, with his own money, down at the grain elevator - the closest thing there was to a skyscraper in Elton, a white tubular obelisk sticking up above the railroad tracks on the edge of town.
During his high-school years in the vigorous 1920s he held down a part-time job at the local grain elevator (photo).
He backed up, found a gravel track that went east along the side of the grain elevator.
About a block from a hospital, two blocks from a big grain elevator.
The new grain elevator for the docks had been completed since he had sailed away, and up on the hill the two microwave rectennae loomed behind the new geothermal power plant, the second antenna already half covered with its wire net.
It could indicate no more than a gas station and a grain elevator-a row of huge, melded columns which he found an odd but fascinating structure.
I watched his father demolish a grain elevator next to my right-of-way in Wisconsin.
I watched his father demolish a grain elevator next to my right-of-way in Wis.