Dolese Bros. plant upgrade promotes consistency, efficiency

By Edited by Zach Mentz| August 9, 2019

Two classifying tanks and two Ultra Sand Plants, consisting of dewatering screens and separators, were installed at Dolese’s White Eagle Plant. Photo courtesy of McLanahan Corp.

Dolese Bros. Co., a full-service construction supply and materials operation based in Oklahoma, operates five washed sand plants, eight crushed stone quarries and 32 ready-mixed concrete facilities.

When Dolese had a need for a large volume of concrete sand in the Dallas/Fort Worth market, the company searched for a location with a desirable deposit and access to rail service. Dolese discovered such a spot in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and built a rail spur there.

The company then began to analyze the plant size it would need to serve one of the nation’s larger markets. It wanted equipment that would not only operate reliably, but would provide a consistent product to better serve customers.

In the end, Dolese turned to McLanahan Corp. to achieve goals at its White Eagle Plant.

“When we look at large production, consistency in product is really what drove us to pick McLanahan equipment for this site,” says Cory Shreffler, engineering manager at Dolese. “McLanahan has been one of the better equipment suppliers to work with when it comes to delivery, schedule, doing what they say they’re going to do when it comes to delivering equipment, and then that equipment doing what it’s supposed to do when it shows up.

“McLanahan has just been an experienced group of folks that we can reach out to, to help us solve some of our deposit issues,” he adds.

Designing workflow

Working with Dolese to design a plant that fit the Ponca City site, McLanahan installed two classifying tanks and two Ultra Sand Plants, consisting of dewatering screens and separators, that process 600 to 800 tph of C33 concrete sand and 100 to 150 tph of mason sand as Dolese develops a lake.

The plant produces C33 concrete sand and mason sand for the Dallas/Fort Worth market. Photo courtesy of McLanahan Corp.

Material dredged from the lake is split to a pair of horizontal scalping screens, and each split flows to a McLanahan feed-regulating sump, giving a more consistent feed to the two classifying tanks. Each classifying tank sorts the material and discharges it to two dewatering screens, producing drip-free sand for stockpiling.

From there, water and any material passing through the dewatering screens fall into a sump, where it is pumped to separators to recover the fine sand material.

According to Shreffler, the dewatering screens play a vital role in the operation. Because Dolese stacks its sand over large reclaim tunnels that convey the sand to a train, the material needs to be as dry as possible to prevent handling issues inside tunnels.

“The most beneficial part of the design of this plant is the fact that it does dry the material and keeps it to where we can manage it and load it in railcars a lot better,” says Troy Banks, operations manager of the aggregate/sand division at Dolese.

McLanahan also installed an automatic cross belt sampler that sweeps a section of the material off the moving conveyor belt as it is headed to the stockpile and discharges it to be analyzed.

“The McLanahan cross belt sampler has been a blessing to us,” says Jeff Lewis, superintendent of Dolese’s White Eagle Plant. “It makes it a lot easier and safer for my guys to pull a sample, and also gives a better representative sample.”

The results

According to Dolese’s Troy Banks, the most beneficial part of the plant’s design is the fact that it dries material and makes it manageable enough to be loaded into railcars. Photo courtesy of McLanahan Corp.

All of the equipment – from the feed-regulating sumps, classifying tanks and dewatering screens to the hydrocyclones and cross belt sampler – plays a role in helping Dolese meet its consistency goals.

“The feed-regulating sumps really allow us to give a more consistent feed to these classifying tanks, and that lets those classifying tanks sort that material in a much more consistent way, really to the extent where it’s near hands-off for our operators,” Shreffler says. “He can walk away and feel good about the product going through it.”

According to Shreffler, the cross belt sampler adds even more consistency to the operation, allowing Dolese to sample at a more regular frequency.

“It helps us take out any sampling bias,” Shreffler says.

Overall, the reliability of the McLanahan equipment has allowed Dolese to achieve consistency across the board, from the equipment’s operation to the final product.

“Our experience with the reliability of McLanahan equipment has been really great,” Shreffler says. “We were able to utilize all of the kind of long runtime opportunities that well-designed equipment permits. With McLanahan equipment consistently operating when we need it to, it lets us know how we can better serve our customers.”