The big news in the asphalt plant business is that late last year Terex consolidated its diverse brands—Terex CMI, Bid-Well, Terex Cifali, Terex Belgium, Terex Advance Mixers and Cedarapids—into one organization, Terex Roadbuilding.
The organization has four business units with dedicated engineering, sales and service groups. The Asphalt Plant Group, led by General Manager David Emerson, will serve asphalt producers with asphalt plants formerly branded CMI, Cedarapids and Standard-Havens. The Asphalt Mobile Equipment Group, led by General Manager Mark Hunt, will serve asphalt contractors with products such as cold planers, reclaimers/stabilizers and pavers formerly branded Cedarapids and CMI. The Concrete Ready-Mix Truck and Plant Group, led by Vice President and General Manager Dale Jones, will serve concrete producers with ready-mix trucks and concrete plants formerly branded Advance Mixer and CMI. Finally, the Concrete Mobile Equipment Group, also led by Dale Jones, will serve concrete contractors with Bid-Well pavers and slip-form pavers, spreaders, material placers, trimmers and concrete plants formerly under the CMI and Johnson-Ross brands.
The following is a sample of recent product announcements we have received recently in the field of asphalt plants.
Ultraportable
An early innovation from the Terex Asphalt Plant Group is the E150P highly portable, low-load hot-mix asphalt (HMA) plant. The E150P (Circle 915) is a counterflow-drum asphalt plant, with the environmental advantages that carries, but it can still be transported in just four truckloads, Rick Zettler, a spokesman for Terex, told Roads & Bridges.
The E150P features a 150-tph Magnum counterflow drum, formerly sold under the Cedarapids/Standard-Havens brand. The 64-in.-diam., 32-ft-long drum is capable of running a wide range of mix designs, including tough state spec mixes for interstate paving. Featuring counterflow technology, the E150P drum mixer can run higher percentages of RAP than parallel-flow plants while keeping within environmental regulations.
The E150P drum mixer is pitched at operating angle on its chassis, saving significantly on setup and tear-down time. Also included on the same chassis as the drum is the plant’s jet-pulse-style baghouse and the motor control center. By combining these components on one frame, the need for running duct work, return dust screws and large, high-amperage wiring is eliminated.
In addition to the drum-baghouse chassis, the base portable plant design includes a self-erect silo; a unit with four cold-feed bins, a screen and a conveyor; and an asphalt cement tank/control house frame.
Visitors to the Terex booth at ConExpo-Con/Agg can actually walk through the company’s newest asphalt drum mixer design. The new counterflow drum is available for portable, relocatable and stationary plants, with capacities of 300-500 tph for portable and 300-700 tph for relocatable and stationary plants. The new drum will be available for the 2005 production season, replacing the Terex Triple-Drum design. It also will be available as a field retrofit for existing Triple-Drum plants.
Real-time quality control
The Accu-Swipe belt sampler (Circle 916), an important part of Astec’s Real Time Quality Control system, takes a cross-sectional sample of aggregate in approximately half a second. Attached to the inclined conveyor off the cold feed, Accu-Swipe takes the aggregate sample without disrupting production.
The Accu-Swipe then drops the sample into the Automatic Gradation Unit (AGU). The AGU weighs and screens the aggregate, separating the material by size and measuring its quantity. The AGU allows producers and state regulators to verify the aggregate mixture before liquid asphalt is added.
Also from Astec Industries Inc., Chattanooga, Tenn., the self-erecting portable asphalt plant (Circle 917) is ultracompact and designed for fast and easy transport. Built-in foundations and bulkheads simplify setup and eliminate the need for shims, concrete supports and retaining walls. In addition, the plant and its control house are completely assembled, piped and wired at the factory to get producers up and running quickly.
Make up your mile
Asphalt Drum Mixers Inc., Huntertown, Ind., offers the Milemaker Series (Circle 918), a line of stationary and highly portable hot-mix plants ranging in size from 160 to 425 tph.
With combined drum lengths from 40 to 54 ft, depending on plant size, the Milemaker dual-drum, counterflow mixer offers the longest drying and mixing times in the industry.
The fuel-efficient plants, with separate drying and mixing drums, are specially designed to ensure the highest aggregate moisture removal levels possible, deliver the mix design quality required to meet Superpave and SHRPS specifications, effectively add and blend additives, efficiently process higher percentages of RAP and exceed federal clean-air regulations.
Blenders hit the field
The first two large-capacity portable asphalt rubber blending plants engineered and produced by Ecopath, Scottsdale, Ariz., have begun service on a couple of paving projects for the Arizona Department of Transportation. Ecopath was created by Stratco Global last year. The Ecopath Asphalt Rubber Blending Plant (Circle 919) includes a blending trailer and reaction trailer with a 30,000-gal, dual-compartment, agitated reaction tank. It offers continuous proportional blending of rubber and asphalt cement for a high-quality, homogeneous mixture and includes real-time, in-line viscosity measurement. The plant is compatible with any HMA plant, is mobile, requires minimal setup time and is controlled by a PC-based computer system. The units are designed to blend asphalt rubber binder at up to 45 tph.
