Murphy Concrete & Construction maximizes screen’s modularity

Murphy Concrete & Construction (MCC), located in Appleton, Wisconsin, has been serving the aggregate, asphalt, construction and ready-mixed concrete industries since 1926.

With production facilities and quarries across northeast Wisconsin, MCC supplies materials for commercial parking lots, state highways, bridges, interchanges, residential and commercial concrete delivery and placement, and custom aggregate processing.

Challenge

At MCC’s busiest limestone quarry in Mackville, Wisconsin, the operation crushes and washes manufactured sand for use in its blacktop and concrete plants.

“For many years, we never had any way of drying our product up,” says Terry Ross, MCC’s washed materials production manager. “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.”

In addition to wanting a drier product, MCC sought a plant that would give it the ability to quickly and easily move production from one location to another.

“All of our plants are portable,” says 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.”

Adds Ross: “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 Co., McLanahan’s aggregate equipment dealer in Wisconsin. MCC looked to Aring for a solution, ultimately purchasing a McLanahan UltraDRY VD18 dewatering screen to dewater material discharged from its twin 44-in. wash plant.

“With the production yield that we gained on that and the moisture content dropping, we decided to go with another VD18 on our twin 36,” Green says. “Aring was very helpful in getting us the equipment we need to get our job done.”

According to McLanahan, 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 UltraDRY can be torn down and moved to a new location with one pick when required.

The UltraDRY removes moisture to yield a drip-free product for easier material handling, McLanahan adds. It features a McLanahan slurry pump and sump, and 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 it requires to operate at optimum efficiency. When MCC needs to move its wash plant, the company knows it can be up and running in a 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,” Green says. “Having the VD18 on the skid has made it very portable and very user-friendly for getting it set up with minimal downtime.”

Green says the addition of the UltraDRY dewatering screen after MCC’s existing wash plant resulted in a tremendous yield increase for the company.

“It’s all about the finished product,” Green says. “We’ve gone from a moisture content of 18 percent, and with the UltraDRY screen we’ve dropped that down to about 7 to 8 percent moisture content.”

Additionally, the UltraDRY allows MCC to create a drier manufactured sand that can be used in the blacktop plant.

“It saved us a lot of money,” Ross says. “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.”

MCC has seen improvements in stockpiles after putting the UltraDRY to use, as well.

“We get less segregation, better uniformity in our piles [and] they stack better,” Ross says. “We make less mess under our conveyors, less cleanup. It helps all the way around to save money.”

Information for this article courtesy of McLanahan Corp.