Investment in crushing and screening equipment is helping to progress work on a new highway development in Oman
Road improvements currently underway in Oman promise to strengthen the road network and reduce journey times significantly when completed later this year. The new 32km Salalah Bypass will divert traffic away from the city centre to meet existing and future traffic growth.
Central to the development has been the supply of construction materials and main contractor the Oman Building and Contracting Company has been investing to meet this demand for this high profile project. The Oman Building and Contracting Company worked with local
The new four-lane bypass has been built to international all-weather standards to provide smoother traffic flow on the Salalah-Thamrait-Nizwa highway system and meet traffic volume growth that will come from investment in the city's port and free trade zone. Due to the importance of the development, it has been fast-tracked by the Supreme Committee for Town Planning, which is part of Oman's Ministry of National Economy.
According to the Oman Building and Contracting Company, a principle reason for the acquisition of the Sandvik machinery was due to the fact that at various locations in the project crushers and screening systems were needed to be used in conjunction in order to produce a range of base materials, and aggregate, for asphalt and civil engineering works from the indigenous materials. "The Al Fairuz supplied Sandvik machinery has been found to provide flexibility, mobility and unique reduction rates, thereby making a tremendous contribution to cost reduction through facilitating the processing of any suitable indigenous materials to be found in the vicinity of various road construction segments," said a spokesman for the company.
All the Sandvik impact and jaw crushers, together with assorted screens used on the Salalah road construction project, are track mounted, self-propelled and diesel hydraulically powered, enabling them to go to the source of any material as quickly as an excavator in order to commence processing immediately. The screens and crushers may be used either individually or in groups, and can be relocated within hours to a new segment of the project thereby combining productivity and flexibility.
The material being processed is known as wadi- gravel, which consists of a mixture of limestone and basalt. The material possesses a feed size of 0-500mm, with a QI430 impact crusher and a QA450 screen being used as a crushing and screening train to produce: 0-5mm, 5-12mm, and 12-22mm gradings.
These two units have proved to be highly productive and are currently working two 10 hour shifts each day, averaging an impressive production of 250tonnes per hour over the last twelve months.
In order to enhance the flexibility of the screening and crushing operation a third machine - a Sandvik QI340 impact crusher with product recirculation system - is used to produce a 0-50mm grading.
The Oman Building and Contracting Company has said that to date the Sandvik machinery has proved equal to the task in processing the material, working 20 hour days. The company added that the combination of state of the art Sandvik manufacturing, together with high levels of aftermarket support from Al Fairuz, will ensure that the Salalah bypass is completed on time, and with materials of the highest quality.
