Sand, aggregate and minerals must be washed in order to meet many required specifications for various projects. Washing and classifying equipment provides producers with the ability to remove excess water and deleterious materials such as clay, silt, shale, coal, soft stone, roots, twigs and other debris from the rock.
If not washed, construction material containing deleterious materials can cause cracking in structural projects and prevent drainage in transportation projects. Similarly in the coal industry, unwashed coal can decrease its quality and efficiency and, therefore, its price.
Washing is becoming increasingly important as producers find themselves progressing farther into their reserves and extracting material with greater amounts of deleterious materials, or facing stricter specifications for their construction aggregate. Washing and classifying equipment helps producers meet these strict specifications and do more with their deposit.
Another function of washing and classifying equipment is particle sizing. Classifying equipment is ideal for separating material that is too small to be sized on traditional screening equipment. Using classifying equipment, producers can remove excess material, retain finer particles and create multiple products from a single feed. In this way, producers are able to make the most of their deposit by creating additional salable products at one time.
There are many options when it comes to choosing the right washing and classifying equipment for your application. Some material only requires rinsing on a screen to remove the undesirables, while other material requires a more vigorous washing process to liberate the clay and other debris. Certain equipment is best for washing coarse materials, while other equipment is ideal for washing and classifying fine materials. In order to process material for a variety of markets, producers can employ a combination of washing and classifying equipment to meet their needs.
McLanahan manufactures a wide range of washing and classifying equipment, meaning the company is able to select an option that will ensure each customer has the best process engineered solution for their washing and classifying application.
McLanahan’s washing equipment can help producers meet specifications by removing the deleterious material that can harm final products. This equipment employs rotating paddles and screw shafts to scour and abrade the material, as well as a rising current of water to aid in the liberation of clays, crusher dust, silt and other fine material. The agitation of the equipment results in particle-on-particle attrition that also helps to remove deleterious material.
Classifying equipment from McLanahan can help producers to separate even the smallest material to create products of various mesh sizes. This allows producers to do more with a single deposit, potentially increasing their profitability. Besides classification, McLanahan’s classifying equipment can also aid in the removal of lightweight deleterious material.
