Construction World July 2019

DOUBLING PRODUCTION FOR MORE ASPHALT

Western Cape asphalt producer, More Asphalt has almost doubled production capacity at its Tygerberg Valley site outside Cape Town with a custom-built continuous mix asphalt plant from Comar.

An aerial view of the new Comar asphalt plant at More Asphalt.

S tarting production in October 2018, the facility impressed its owners by exceeding its operating expectations and producing 100 000 tonnes in its first seven months. According to Owen Peringuey, executive director at More Asphalt, the manufacturing of the plant went very smoothly, in line with the set out plan and within the required timelines. “It was a pleasure working with a company as professional as Comar,” says Peringuey. “They were able to design, manufacture and commission what we needed, and more.” Comar’s team of experienced design engineers, using modern software tools, designed the 140 tonne-per-hour plant to suit the customer’s constrained site footprint. Space savings were achieved through the design and installation of a single combination drying and mixing drum in a counterflow configuration, incorporating a long-nose burner. “Our years of experience in designing, building and operating these plants allows Comar to customise each plant to our individual customer’s particular specifications,” says Comar Director Ken Basson. “As a 100% local company, we also understand the demands of local conditions, and build plants that maximise uptime and productivity.” The new plant includes six cold feed bins for sand

and aggregate and two recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) bins for fine and coarse fragment sizes. A baghouse for catching dust particulate emissions, as well as a state-of-the-art motor control centre in a 12 metre shipping container, are also key elements of the new plant. “The facility uses a higher quality fuel than normal, providing better combustion and less sulphur burn-off,” says De Wet Dreyer, Comar Operations Manager. “Among the benefits of this fuel choice is longer bag life and reduced maintenance costs for the overall operation.” As a result, the plant complies comfortably with new emission standards on dust particulate levels, which require that emissions do not exceed 50 mg/Nm 3 . A recent inspection of the plant confirmed it was dealing well with the high production volumes, showing little wear on the lifters and also minimal wear in the bags, which were operating highly efficiently. The design provides for additional loadout flexibility should the customer require it. This allows a fourth product to be discharged directly onto trucks, while the three silos are filled. The scope of work for the More Asphalt contract included disassembling and removing the company’s old plant before installation of the new plant could begin. 

Automatically measure MILLING

Wirtgen has developed a solution that, for the first time, makes it possible to accurately and reliably document actual milling work completed – the new performance tracker (WPT).

I t is not uncommon for milling contractors to have to mill more than is specified in the RFP when carrying out a rehabilitation project. But how can the contractor bill the client on the basis of a transparent calculation when this occurs? Up until now, this usually involved calling in a surveying technician. The result: additional costs and delays in completing the project. The Wirtgen PERFORMANCE TRACKER, which also offers other valuable benefits, demonstrates that this can be done much more efficiently. Connected milling

positioning and other sensors. The machine operator can continuously track the most important information in real time on the control panel’s display. After completing the milling work, a report with all of the relevant performance and consumption data is generated automatically in Excel and PDF format and sent to the machine operator by e-mail. Performance tracker

In addition to the documentation feature, which allows milling jobs to be billed quickly and on the basis of transparent information, the Wirtgen performance tracker can also be used to precisely determine site costs. For example, the accurately measured performance and consumption data not only makes it easier to evaluate the efficiency of current and future construction sites. In addition, the data can be used to easily compare the machines with other cold milling machines in the machine fleet – a valuable basis for the machine operator to decide which milling machine is the most efficient solution for which job. WPT Available as Add-On Kit In addition to the new F series, Wirtgen large milling machines built from 2010 onwards can also be equipped with this. Thanks to intelligent hardware and software solutions, it is possible to retrofit these machines at Wirtgen Group locations within a single day. 

An efficient flow of information is the key to making processes easier, faster, and more cost-effective. Wirtgen refers to this as connected milling. This term describes the direct flow of information between the machine, operator, service workshop, and scheduling office. For this purpose, Wirtgen uses the infrastructure of the Wirtgen Group’s existing telematics solution WITOS. Reliable documentation of performance and consumption data The Wirtgen performance tracker uses a laser scanner to measure the cross-sectional profile to be milled. Surface milling performance and milling volume are then precisely measured using GPS

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD JULY 2019