A family-run quarry in Ireland, near Abbeyleix, County Laois, some 100km south-west of Dublin, played host to the official launch of Terex Washing Systems newest modular aggregate and sand washing plant.
The Aggresand modular wash plant brings together aggregate and sand washing on a modular chassis, producing three aggregates and two sands on one machine.
The official unveiling and live demonstration took place at Dowling Quarries as part of TWS’ annual dealer forum when over 40 TWS distributors from around the world attended the premiere event. They saw for the first time a live demonstration of the new plant.
“TWS is delighted to officially launch the Aggresand washing plant after what has been an eagerly awaited event for TWS distributors and customers,” says Elaine Donaghy, marketing manager of TWS.
“Following the event, we are already witnessing a huge surge of enquiries.”
The first Aggresand machine has been working successfully in Dowling Quarries for some weeks and to date is processing glacier sand and gravel material formed during the Ice Age.
“We are delighted to be the first quarry to install and operate the world’s first-ever Aggresand, which is truly is a superb wash plant,” says quarry owner Humphrey Dowling.
“This plant ultimately replaced an older
“I like the idea of the modular aspect, allowing it to be moved to another site later if required.
“The throughput currently being achieved on the plant is excellent and the quality of the aggregates and sands being produced is very impressive. The high performance two-deck vibrating grid allows us to feed material directly from the face of the quarry, at 200mm, large material is scalped off while the minus 50mm material goes straight into the wash plant. This eliminates the need for expensive pre-screening of the feed material.”
The quarry has been operating for some years, with the old plant processing some 9 million tonnes of material during its life. There is an estimated 11 million tonnes of material left to be extracted at present.
TWS says that the main objective in developing the Aggresand plant was to meet its customers’ needs for a modular system that can efficiently wash and produce multiple aggregates and sands within one machine.
The Aggresand plant’s design achieves this by providing a throughput capacity of 250tonnes/hour as well as having quick set-up time allowing the plant to be erected in one day. It fits into six shipping containers and quick set up time is also achieved through essential plug and play plumbing/pipework and electrical wiring.
The Aggresand plant at Dowling Quarries is fitted with a 12’ double-deck vibrating grid with 100mm bofor bars and 50mm woven wire mesh. This particular plant separates 0-40mm to the wash plant that gives three aggregate materials and two sands. Reject material from the live head is stockpiled and later crushed into 6f2 material via a Terex crusher when accumulated into stockpiles of 50,000 tonnes.
On the bottom deck the <50mm product is delivered by the feeder belt to a 1,000mm wide electrically-driven inclined feed belt, which is fitted with an integral wash box to pre-soak the material and deliver it to the full width of the screen thus utilising the full screening area. The 4.9m x 1.5m three-deck screen is electrically driven producing an aggressive 6mm throw, and is fitted with eight individually controlled spray bars on each deck.
The sized and rinsed aggregates produced by the screen are stockpiled on three integral 9m stockpilers. The dual sand plant includes two rubber lined centrifugal pumps and two heavy duty rubber lined cyclones which remove silt (<75 micron). The silt-free sand is delivered to a split 12x5 screen to produce two grades of dewatered (12% moisture) silt-free sand.
The sand stockpilers are radial powered through electrical wheel drives and have a stockpiling capacity of 350m3.
The end products are used as follows: 6-14mm (503 drainage material); 14-22mm (503 concrete material); 22-40mm (505 drainage material) while 0-3mm sand is used for plastering and block making and the 0-5mm sand is used in the production of concrete.
TWS says that overall there is zero waste from the plant and minimum sand being lost to ponds.
