Morris says while other Tilcon New York sites had installed air classification systems successfully, the ones at Mount Hope were his first experience with air classification. And he had some initial concerns about wear within the system. “The granite gneiss here is very abrasive and hard on our equipment. But we lined the classifiers with ceramic and that has given us a longer wear life. And because we’re familiar with how the material flows through the units, we can easily patch the ceramic where it tends to wear. But overall, because it has only a few moving parts, the units require very little maintenance,” he says.

“From a quarry perspective, having the Buell system on site has allowed us to take an excess of product that we couldn’t use and turn it into something usable,” Morris says, adding that the real return for Tilcon is seen at the asphalt plant. “If we were just relying on it to make a premium product that we could sell for a couple dollars more, it might not have been the best answer for us,” he says. “But with the asphalt plant on site, the money is coming back to us in energy savings and throughput downstream.”

Moving the air classification system from the Bedrock site to Mount Hope was “a slam-dunk,” Guardino says. “With the volume of stone we process, the amount of sales we have here and the asphalt plants on site, this is the best location for us to have the air classification system. The energy savings we’re seeing at the asphalt plant is the big benefit in our eyes. It’s been a successful endeavor for us.”

Article courtesy of the Buell division of Fisher-Klosterman, Inc.