One of the most crucial decisions any road construction company can take is to purchase the asphalt mixing plant. If you are the owner of a road construction business, you should learn about the basic types of asphalt mixing plants and the capacities they can deliver. It is a significant investment for your company. It will determine the success of your business in the long run. Hence, look for an asphalt mixing plant that delivers you many years of stable performance. When you have a powerful asphalt mixer, it can boost the success of your construction business on many levels. In numerous cases, it has been found that superior quality equipment has helped a construction company to achieve enormous success. Study the various trends in the construction industry to find a machine that would aptly suit your needs.
Even though the primary function of the asphalt mix plant is to combine and mix different grades and aggregates at a high temperature with the filler material and bitumen to create the hot mix asphalt, the whole process is not that straightforward. The whole process must be conducted in a controlled environment to get the desired results. Hence, it requires proper care. If not ensured, things can be seriously wrong or bad.
The two types of asphalt mixing plants:
• Asphalt batch plants
• Asphalt drum plants / continuous type
The asphalt batch plants can make the hot mix asphalt material in batches. This batch size gets fixed from the control panel. The plant can keep on producing the batches as long as the set production goal is achieved.
Advantages of the asphalt batching plants:
• These machines can produce the best quality hot mix asphalt.
• The process used for this production is highly accurate. It means they always give the desired results.
• The control panel that comes with the hot mix asphalt is user-friendly.
• These hot mix asphalt plants are in high demand worldwide and are well-known for their quality.
• Various mixed batch combinations can be stored and used with these plants.
• The standards of environmental protection are much better.
The drum mixers are small in size and notable for their compact designs. It means asphalt drum mixers can be transported from one place to another. They produce the hot asphalt mix in one continuous process.
There are numerous advantages of the asphalt drum mixing plants:
• They are compact.
• They can produce hot mix asphalt material simply and continuously.
• They require considerably less investment for a company to own.
• It is possible to manufacture the higher capacity plants.
So, if you are wondering how you can ensure smooth functioning and result-driven equipment to serve your goals effectively, you can focus on obtaining a top-notch asphalt plant that can benefit you. You can find many types of asphalt plants in the market. Therefore, you need to choose the one that will be most suitable for you. The best thing to do here is to opt for a machine that ideally suits your specific requirements. So, if you have the best piece of working equipment, you can be sure that half of your job will get accomplished.
There are several parameters to consider while trying to buy a hot asphalt mix plant.
The first thing you need to do here is deciding which hot asphalt mix plant you should opt for. The main types of hot asphalt mix plants are batch and continuous types. The batch-type hot asphalt mix plants make hot mix asphalt in batches. The continuous type machines make the HMA a continuous process. It is important to note that the differences did not just stop there. There are numerous other differentiating factors between the asphalt drum batching plants and the continuous type of asphalt drum mixers.
Batch Type Asphalt Plant
Here at Atlas, we produce a range of top-notch asphalt mix plants that vary between 20 tph to 30 tph continuous types and the high productive 260 tph asphalt mix plants of batch type.
Our range of asphalt batch mixing plants start from as low as 60-80 tph and other sizes in our line-up include the 80-100 tph, 120 tph, 160 tph, 200 tph and 260 tph machine. We have kept the basic design of these asphalt batch mix plants simple so they can deliver a flawless performance for you. It makes the whole machine easy to operate, run and maintain.
The components of these machines include the cold aggregate feeders. You can customize the number of cold aggregate feeders according to your requirements. The machines come with a charging conveyor. The primary scalping screen help take the aggregates to the drying drum for exposing them to heat treatment.
The process has the support of a powerful burner. The aggregates emerging from the drum’s other end get transported to the top portion of the machine’s tower unit through a fully enclosed elevator. Hence, heat loss gets minimized. After the aggregates reach the top part of the tower, these aggregates get passed through the multiple deck vibrating screen. It helps them separate the aggregates as per their sizes. Once separated, they get placed in different chambers before being weighed. Each of the aggregates gets weighed separately based on its size. The aggregates are transferred to the mixing unit with the bitumen. The material is taken by the filler elevator unit to the separate weighing unit cited on the top of the machine’s batching tower. The bitumen gets transferred to the weighing unit before being disposed into the mixer. The bitumen is placed in separate tanks to heat the materials. The bitumen is heated either directly or indirectly. The machine also provides a separate silo to store the dust or the filler material.
Aggregates are first separated and then weighed individually. These machines allow users to produce the finest-quality hot mix material according to the recipe.
A primary pollution control mechanism comes fitted with the plant that is of a pre-separator or dry cyclone type. This device or mechanism can help the heavy particles to settle down once sucked or pulled in from the dryer. A wet scrubber or a bag filter treats the dust so that most of the dust gets eventually settled down. The bag filters are naturally more capable of preventing pollution compared to wet scrubbers.
Some machines come with provisions that allow you to store the hot mix asphalt within a storage silo. The asphalt batch mixing plants come equipped with PLC-type controls, and the software is user-friendly with SCADA as standard.
As the plant has a modular construction, it is easy to relocate and transport the machine within a few days. It is a reason why a lot of people prefer to use this machine.
You can get this machine without spending a fortune in the process, and the spare parts are also cost-effective. It means you can have the fastest ROI with these machines.
Continuous – Drum Type Asphalt Plants
When it comes to the continuous type asphalt mix plants, we have got two models:
- Counter-flow type.
- Parallel flow type.
Counterflow asphalt plants are continuous mixing plants designed for people who need to have superior quality of the hot mix material. These machines ensure additional savings in terms of fuel when you compare them to parallel flow-type machines. Here at Atlas, we offer these machines in varying capacities, such as 40 tph to 60 tph, 60 tph to 90 tph, and 90 tph to 120 tph.
Some of the crucial components of the counter-flow asphalt plants are cold aggregate feeders, charging conveyors, and vibrating screens. The heart of this plant or the primary unit has a counter-flow drying unit with a separate mixing unit. This counter-flow dryer can treat the aggregates. Hence, it ensures even heating while they move towards the burner. The separate mixing zone for the aggregates benefits from better quality mixing in separation. Since there is a distinct mixing unit, it safeguards the liquids to get in direct contact with the flames. The drying time and the mixing time are extended to ensure the high quality of the end product.
There is a dust suction mechanism. It is based on the juncture where aggregates enter the drum. The dry dust collector handles dust collection. It is the primary pollution control device for the plant. Also, a secondary device is used in the pollution control process. It is either a bag filter or a wet dust collector. Wet dust collectors or wet scrubbers use water for cleaning the dust. The bag filters effectively clean dry air by allowing them to pass through multiple bag filters fitted inside the baghouse. The bitumen tanks that come with these plants can have a direct or indirect heating system with different capacities according to the requirements. You can directly add minerals into the plant’s mixing container along with the bitumen. The plants sold in India come with a microprocessor-based control panel. The exported plants have PLC type control panel.
Also Read: Counterflow Asphalt Plant For Spain
As the process of dust suction is carried out before the mixing and aggregates proceed towards the flame, a design like this ensures top-notch results when it comes to pollution control. You can expect to have good results for fuel-saving, mixing, and superior quality of the hot mix material compared to what you can have with the parallel flow asphalt mix plants. You can produce recycled asphalt by directly adding recycled asphalt to the mixing unit. We can also provide you with storage silos of varying capacities.
Our hot asphalt mix plants are also available in mobile-type plants. It is most suited for users who need to ensure better production on a tight budget. The mobile plants can also offer you other benefits such as enhanced pollution control, greater fuel savings, and better HMA.
We can also provide you with the state-of-the-art parallel flow asphalt drum mix plants. These machines are some of the most user-friendly ones and can do the job simply for you. Our parallel flow type asphalt drum mix plants are in 4 models with capacities ranging from 90 tph to 120 tph, 60 tph to 90 tph, 40 tph to 60 tph, and 30 tph to 45 tph.
The unique thing about this machine is it has a simple design and is equipped with cold feeding bins further customized according to your requirements. The aggregates are weighed by the charging conveyor. Then moved towards the drum. The plant has a single drum to heat the aggregates and mix them. The burner flame is directed towards the direction where the aggregates flow. Hot aggregates are combined with minerals and bitumen. Both the heating and mixing functions are carried out in one single drum.
Compared to the other two types of hot mix plants, this mobile plant covers much less space which means it can be used for quickly making the hot mix asphalt. There are also provisions for adding the hot mix silo if you are looking for them. The control panel is either PLC type or microprocessor type.
It has a simple design most suitable for the customers looking for a fuss-free experience while producing hot mix asphalt and who would prefer to have faster production rates.
So, if you are trying to find a mobile asphalt mixing plant with a single drum design or parallel flow type that offers you excellent performance, you can get it from us at Atlas. We offer these plants in capacities like 90 tph to 120 tph, 60 tph to 90 tph, 40 tph to 60 tph, and 30 tph to 45 tph.
These machines have a simple design like you get from stationary plants in mobile forms. The plants are well-suited for people looking to move frequently with these systems and do not want the production quality, mobility, and quantity to falter.
The whole plant is divided into multiple chassis and assembled directly at the site. It helps ensure optimum levels of mobility with the machine. Every chassis is pre-wired with the kingpin system, junction box, pneumatic braking, and axles with the wheel hubs. Such a modular design allows maximum convenience to users when they want to disassemble the units quickly for transportation. As all the units are pre-wired, you can get the wiring done fast in time. The plant will be operable in a short time. The plant comes equipped with primary and secondary devices for pollution control.
Mobile design is available for simple drum mix plants.
The small asphalt plants available on three chassis are perfect for managing small jobs. Such plants have a single capacity of 20 tph to 30 tph. Feeder bins of the plants are 2×2 bin types. These plants can store two diverse aggregate sizes. The machine has a single conveyor. It runs below aggregates. The conveyor takes aggregates into the mixing and drying drum directly.
The aggregate feeders and the mixing and drying drum are based on one single chassis. Another chassis holds the bitumen tank, the control cabin, and the filler hopper. The pollution controlling device is based separately on another chassis. The controls here are either PLC-based or microprocessor-based. It depends on the customer’s choice.
It is perfect for customers looking to find a small, portable plant. It is movable to placed easily and frequently.
Conclusion:
In this article, I have discussed all the essential aspects of the hot mix asphalt models we provide. However, have a clear idea about your requirement before buying one. Discuss your needs with us when you are looking to buy the hot mix asphalt batch plant. Since it is a long-term investment, you should be very careful when making one. You should also visit several manufacturers and compare multiple models before making your purchasing decision.