Murphy Concrete and Construction, Inc. (MCC), located in Appleton, Wis., has been serving the aggregate, asphalt, construction and ready mix concrete industries since 1926. With production facilities and quarries across northeastern Wisconsin, MCC supplies materials for commercial parking lots, state highways, bridges, interchanges, residential and commercial concrete delivery and placement, and custom aggregate processing.
Case Studies
Challenge
At MCC’s busiest limestone quarry in Mackville, Wis., they crush and wash manufactured sand for use in their blacktop and concrete plants.
“For many years, we never had any way of drying our product up,” said MCC Washed Materials Production Manager Terry Ross. “It was getting costly sending wet material to our asphalt plants. It cost more oil and more fuel. We decided we had to dry it off because of our demand.”
As well as needing a drier product, MCC wanted a plant that would give them the ability to quickly and easily move their production from one location to another.”
“All of our plants are portable,” explained Ory Green, Aggregate Production Manager at MCC. “We go from about 17 different pits and quarries to do all of our washing and crushing, and portability is key. Being able to tear down and move in a number of days and have that uptime is very key.”
Ross added, “Most of the benefit for the company is you can go to the job, to the location where the material is. If you are stationary, you have to do a lot of trucking, a lot of expense hauling material into the plants at all times. If you’re portable, you can go to the material and put up what you need in that area at any given moment.”
Solution
MCC has had a long relationship with Aring Equipment and Supply, McLanahan’s aggregate equipment dealer in Wisconsin, and they looked to them for a solution. Through Aring, MCC purchased a McLanahan UltraDRY VD18 Dewatering Screen to dewater material discharged from their twin 44” wash plant.
“With the production yield that we gained on that and the moisture content dropping, we decided to go with another VD 18 on our twin 36," Green said. “Again, Aring was very helpful in getting us the equipment that we need to get our job done.”
The skid-mounted UltraDRY screens can be installed under any brand of screw washer, and they fit easily under MCC’s existing sand screws. Designed with flexibility in mind, the McLanahan UltraDRY can be quickly and easily torn down and moved to a new location with one pick when required.
With the highest g-forces in the industry, the McLanahan UltraDRY removes the most moisture to yield a drip-free product for easier material handling. Featuring a McLanahan Slurry Pump and sump, the UltraDRY screen returns a portion of the water removed from the sand product back to the screw washer for reuse in the washing and classification process.
Results
The UltraDRY Dewatering Screen provides MCC with the flexibility they require to operate at optimum efficiency. When MCC needs to move their wash plant, they know they can be up and running in the new location in a matter of days.
“On the wash plant in general, depending on the size of the setup, we will be looking at anywhere from about four to seven days for teardown, mobilization and setup to be up and running in the next spot,” shared Green. “Having the VD18 on the skid has made it very portable and very user friendly for getting it set up with minimal downtime.”
Green said the addition of the McLanahan UltraDRY Dewatering Screen after their existing wash plant has resulted in a “tremendous yield increase” for the company.
“It’s all about the finished product,” Green said. “We’ve gone from a moisture content of 18%, and with the UltraDRY screen we’ve dropped that down to about 7-8% moisture content.”
The McLanahan UltraDRY allows MCC to create a drier manufactured sand that they can use in their blacktop plant, saving them money on oil and fuel.
“It saved us a lot of money,” Ross explained. “We can put a product on the ground and in two days be hauling it up to our asphalt plant, running it through and saving us a ton of money.”
In addition to saving money by creating a drier product, MCC has seen improvement in their stockpiles after using the McLanahan UltraDRY.
“We get less segregation, better uniformity in our piles; they stack better. We make less mess under our conveyors, less cleanup. It helps all the way around to save money,” said Ross.
