Fast set-up, lower transport cost and increasingly larger volumes of material that can be processed at any one time tend to be among the key advantages of running a modern mobile crushing and screening plant fleet. Guy Woodford reports on some of the latest mobile models attracting big market interest.
In the increasingly competitive aggregates market, Metso says its customers are increasingly looking for more cost-efficient ways to improve their productivity and lower cost of operations. Introduced a year ago, the NW Rapid crushing and screening system is said by Metso to have proven to help aggregates producers to profit more from even smaller contracts and to change site locations more frequently.
NW Rapid’s high production capacity was one of the decisive factors when M/s M G Contractors in India was looking for a new plant.
“The new Metso NW Rapid plant is a perfect fit for our growing needs for more eco-friendly, mobile and economical solutions. When looking at the available products in the market, we realised that the NW Rapid is a breakthrough in terms of application and quality. It is also backed by Metso’s good brand reputation and their service standards. With this purchase, we feel confident that our production efficiency will increase by as much as 30% compared to a traditional solution. The 12-hour set-up time is extraordinary,” says Udit Mittal, director, M/s M G Contractors.
Setting up a conventional portable crushing and screening plant normally takes at least a week and often requires preparations with foundations and other site conditions. In addition, equipment transportation can be difficult and require special arrangements. Metso says the NW Rapid is the first and only compact wheel-mounted crushing plant on the market that fits compactly into standard 12m containers, allowing it to be easily transported from one place to another by sea, rail or truck. Fast installation and dismantling is facilitated with hydraulically fine-adjustable support legs, hopper walls and screen lifting.
“Cost-efficiency achieved by easy set-up and flexibility serves our customers in the emerging markets particularly well, since it is important to be able to swiftly move production to where the construction projects are situated,” says Julius Mäkelä, Metso’s global product manager, portable plants. “To transport a complete single unit plant from India or Asia to Central America, it would cost around US$20,000. But to transport the same unit in three containers, the cost can be something like US$6-8,000. The saving is remarkable. It also helps reduce the cost of inland transportation.”
The NW Rapid Series includes equipment for multiple aggregate production needs, such as portable jaw crushing, cone crushing as well as horizontal and vertical shaft impactor plants. With these products, customers can set up multistage crushing and screening plants for high-quality end products as well as for ballast production. The NW Rapid crushing and screening plant can be fed by excavator, wheeled loader or dump trucks. Ready-made layouts cover screen feed and cone feed applications, with and without surge hoppers and field conveyors.
The increased capacity of the NW Rapid plant is mainly achieved by the powerful Nordberg GP220 cone crusher and
the new four-deck dual-slope screen, enabling higher screening performance. The whole process can be precisely adjusted by a process control system.
“The new Metso IC50C process control system forms a seamless combination between the primary crushing stage and the secondary crushing and screening stage of the plant. The whole process, including field conveyors, can be started and stopped with the push of a single button, making daily operations safe and easy,” says Mäkelä.
As well as sales in India, the NW Rapid plant is also being used by customers in other regions and countries such as South America, Kazakhstan, Laos, and South Korea.
The NW Rapid complies with European safety standards, and it can be issued with a CE marking.
The new pre-screen feature on the QJ341 is said to provide high amplitude for excellent separation. This enables the removal of a large amount of fines, resulting in greater efficiency, higher productivity and less wear on the crusher. Subsequently, Sandvik says the QJ341+ will be particularly effective in quarrying applications where a high proportion of fines in the feed material are found, as the new pre-screen ‘screens out’ this material prior to entering the crushing chamber. Sandvik claims that test results have already demonstrated increased productivity by as much as 38% in certain applications.
To complement the pre-screen, Sandvik has designed a new telescopic natural fines conveyor, with a discharge height of 3.1m to deal with the increased flow of pre-screened material. The dirt chute has been designed with a steeper angle which Sandvik says enables a faster transfer of material, whilst also increasing the ability to deal with sticky material. The three-position dirt chute allows all material passing the pre-screen grizzly to be diverted onto either the main conveyor or the natural fines conveyor. In the middle position it allows a screened product to be produced out from the fines conveyor. All of this is done by positioning the three-way chute without removing any media from the pre-screen.
The new QJ341+ model includes the same customer-focused characteristics as the standard model: hydraulically adjustable CSS setting, reversible jaw and hydraulic drive enabling the crusher to start under load, thereby maximising uptime. It also has the Sandvik PLC control system and control screen.
Other benefits of the QJ341+ include a new improved self-locking hopper for quick and safe set-up from ground level. Sandvik says improvements have also been made to the main conveyor to reduce drag. The QJ341+ has also been fitted with highly efficient bent axis and radial piston motors throughout, reducing hydraulic flow rates, increasing fuel economy and improving durability.
JPE Earth and Aggregate Solutions, a Powerscreen customer, have been testing the new two-screenbox model onsite in England.
Steve Birch, JPE’s site director, said: “The Chieftain 2200 3 Deck machine has proven itself to be an aggressive screen. The versatility of the machine is fantastic. It has doubled the processing of JPE’s gravel-rich overburden waste material and has the capability to recover 25% gravel content out of this feed. The clean rock sand also produced has the added benefit of then being sold as a ‘filler’ to the local brick industry, therefore minimising the waste onsite.”
The Powerscreen Chieftain 2200 3 Deck is designed for operators who require large volumes of high specification products with maximum versatility. It has a high capacity of up to 700tonnes/hour, leading to an increase in quality product and revenue; as well as a revolutionary patent pending drive system which allows switching between 2 and 4 bearing with bolt-on parts. With a 4 bearing box, Powerscreen says the efficiency of the screen can drop as the box length increases. The box can also become susceptible to torsion, which twists the metal and can cause fatigue. By splitting up into two individual boxes, Powerscreen says the Chieftain 2200 3 deck is able to run aggressively without the constraints of a larger box.
The Chieftain 2200 3 deck can screen with a claimed 20% increase in G-force compared to similar screens with the same surface area. The maximum variability of the machine offers, says Powerscreen, improved capabilities over its class rivals, especially when trying to make high specification aggregate. It’s two highly versatile, 3-deck screenboxes provide a total screening area of 19.5m².
The Chieftain 2200 3 Deck offers the ability to run two smaller screenboxes in a more aggressive set-up which is not limited by the forces experienced with smaller screenboxes. The tumbling action between the screens is said to help maximise efficiency of the screens and accuracy of the product, especially at the close size materials.
The 692km South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) has been designed to transport gas from the Shah Deniz field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea, through Georgia and on to the Georgia-Turkey border.
At full capacity, and after additional stages of development, it is envisaged that the pipeline will export up to 25 billion m³ of gas a year. At the border the pipeline links up a Turkish-built extension joining the SCP to the domestic supply grid in Erzurum, eastern Turkey.
The expanded SCP system will tie into the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) at the Eastern Turkey border which, in turn, will connect with the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) at the Western Turkey border some 1,900kms away. TAP crosses Greece and Albania, from where it continues under the Adriatic Sea to Southern Italy. The total length of TAP is about 870km.
MB Crusher, as partner in the development of the SCP and TAP, is now providing 13 MB-S18 S3 screening buckets for operations development in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.
Suitable for 20-35tonne excavators, the MB-S18 S3 buckets allow for the reuse of recovered materials, particularly useful in road building, construction and maintenance of pipelines. Doing this on a project job site means no requirement to transport excavated materials, negating any cost to the environment.
MB-S18 S3 buckets can be implemented with the magnet and nebuliser kit, increasing the versatility for the separation of iron, as well as allowing their use in inhabited centres due to their ability to suppress dust.
Equipped with baskets formed by interchangeable modular panels, available with different size holes, depending on the needs of the job, the easy assembly and disassembly of the panels on the MB-S18 S3 buckets makes for a quick change to obtain different output material.
The innovative conical shape of the MB-S18 S3’s drum is said to be specially designed to significantly increase the bucket’s hourly production performance and to screen all the collected material, residue-free.
Among the other big product launches at the recent Hillhead 2016 event was Terex Finlay’s new C-1540 direct drive cone crusher. This machine has been developed by the Omagh, Northern Ireland-based manufacturer to satisfy the requirements of the medium-sized owner operator and contract crushers. The machine is said to have been well received at a number of customer preview events and
The Terex Finlay screener line-up at Hillhead 2016 included the new 674 inclined screen. The small to mid-size inclined screen has been specifically developed to appeal to the contract crusher and small scale owner-operator looking to produce four specification products from the one platform.
The 674 inclined screen has been developed, says Terex Finlay, to enter new space in the mobile screening market.
