Performance minerals are key to many industries, from plastics and paint production to batteries and filtration. Imerys, a large player in mineral-based specialities for global industrial use, is an expert in producing various performance materials. In Turkey, Imerys’ subsidiary Harborlite Aegean processes two types of perlite, an amorphous volcanic glass mined in a nearby quarry. The product is used as a filtration medium by the Italian and Spanish juice industries.
In 2021, one of the crushers in Harborlite Aegean’s plant in Dikili needed replacement. The old Turkish impact mill had reached the end of its service life as it could no longer produce the required grain size of 35mm. Imerys decided to contact BHS-Sonthofen, which the company knew from a related project. BHS-Sonthofen had recently delivered a rotor centrifugal crusher of type RSMX to another Imerys plant in Teutschenthal, Germany. There the machine processes aluminium oxide – a highly abrasive mineral. For the sturdy RSMX the material was no real challenge. It proved to be a reliable choice with low wear costs. The technology and the service from BHS-Sonthofen convinced Imerys that the German company could be a good fit for replacing the Turkish perlite crusher.
After a first assessment of the requirements, BHS and Harborlite Aegean decided that an impact crusher of type PB 0806 with an output of 50 tons per hour was the ideal choice for the task at hand, even though the BHS machine had never been used in this application before. The chance to thoroughly test the machine’s capability in the BHS Test Center in Sonthofen gave the team confidence. For this purpose, a truck brought both varieties of the original materials to Germany. One of them was a pre-crushed perlite that was to be reduced from 0 – 90mm to a target size of 0 – 35mm; the other one was a pre-crushed fraction with 0 – 300mm of another type of perlite also with a target size of 0 – 35mm.
“Running tests with original material is a standard procedure at BHS-Sonthofen,” explains project manager Hans Traut from BHS-Sonthofen. “With our tests, we make sure the machine is the best choice for the client. They also ensure optimal machine configurations for minimal wear and help us to adjust the machine so that the processed minerals match the company’s crushing requirements.”
The tests confirmed the experts’ recommendation. The impact crusher is a particularly economical solution for the fine crushing of perlite with a maintenance-friendly design. The adjustable gap width is a key advantage for Harborlite Aegean as it allows their employees to adapt the machine and avoid wear to produce inaccuracies regarding the desired grain size. This guarantees the consistent quality of the product with low-maintenance costs. Also, a throughput rate of 50 tons per hour and the size of the machine were a good fit for the existing plant and Harborlite Aegean’s demands. The Turkish company successfully installed the machine in late December 2021.
“The impact crusher from BHS proved to be a perfect fit for our plant and has been running smoothly since production started in January,” adds Hikmet Bozkurt, plant & mine manager at Harborlite Aegean in Izmir /Turkey.
