High mix quality reduced material costs, safer operation and full data recording: Cantech’s intelligent batching controls benefit both asphalt producers and users.
Cantech’s asphalt batching control systems have an established reputation for providing consistently accurate control of each ingredient in a mix, largely achieved by measuring the achieved weight of aggregate in each batch and dynamically compensating the target weight of bitumen in proportion.
Accurate Bitumen Control
This tight control of final mix quality and quantity benefits producers and their customers alike – not least because very tight control of bitumen often reduces the usage and hence cost of this expensive material. It also reduces the time spent investigating potential complaints and gaining a reputation for good quality which can assist in winning prestige supply contracts and in negotiations regarding supply terms, eg price, stipulated frequency of testing etc.
As an example bitumen content of 5.0% would result from (say) weighing 100kg bitumen and 1900kg aggregate, but if the aggregate under weighs and only achieves 1840kg – which can happen if the plant is struggling to heat the incoming aggregate and thus one or more of the hot aggregate bins runs empty during weighing – then even with exactly 100kg of bitumen the proportion of bitumen in the mix is (100/1940) or 5.15%.
Now whilst it is unreasonable to expect an operator to note the achieved weight of aggregate (1840kg in the case above) and recalculate the weight of bitumen required to give a 5% content, this is exactly what Cantech’s AP-2000 asphalt batching system does – batch in, batch out. It stops the bitumen weighing slightly short of its nominal target and waits for the aggregate weighing to finish, measures the achieved aggregate weight and (providing that is within an acceptable tolerance of its target) recalculates the target weight for the bitumen – in this case the target corresponding to 1840kg of aggregate is 96.8kg – and tops the bitumen up to this revised target weight. Moreover it then works out that it only achieved an overall batch weight of 1936.8kg instead of 2000kg, and adjusts the target weight of all subsequent batches in the load up slightly to ensure that the correct overall target load weight is still achieved.
Full Batch Recording with Remote Access
Moreover detailed records of all batches/loads produced are stored on disk with facility for automatic transfer to remote PCs/servers, in formats easily read into standard software eg Excel, allowing recall and analysis by technical and management staff, both on site and further afield in regional offices/laboratories.
Broadband links also allow technical staff to amend recipes and other quality-sensitive parameters from these central laboratories, avoiding the need to travel to individual sites making it easier and thus likelier that technical staff will identify and make adjustments when appropriate.
Email alerts can be sent automatically to management/technical personnel in response to exceptional events, eg material made outside expected limits (eg too hot/cold), repeated plant faults etc, highlighting areas for preventative maintenance or replacement/improvement.
Safer, Healthier/Centralised Operation
Controlling the process from a remote office (pictured above) provides operators with safe, clean working conditions away from dust, vibration, noise and vehicle movements; and allows centralised control of separate processes – eg a crushing/screening operation as well as asphalt batching – from one control room using related Cantech control systems.
This increases staffing flexibility, reducing the dependency on the knowledge of any individual operator thus making it easier to cover busy periods, holidays and sickness without reduction in quality or output.
For further details on any of these systems or with requirements for similar applications email
[email protected] or visit www.cantech-controls.com
