P.P. Basistha

Quite happy with the success of its first washing plant from CDE Asia limited, North India based crushing major, SVM Stone Crushing has ordered another higher capacity new 'OreMax' series washing plant. The plant which will be delivered shortly has been completely designed and manufactured at CDE's plant at its state of the art manufacturing facility near Kolkata.
The first plant with rated capacity of 70-100 tph and a final output of about 55 tph of manufactured sand was delivered by CDE to SVM in the first quarter of this year. The new 'OreMax' plant with a rated capacity of 120 tph will have final produced sand output of 95tph. The sand produced from the plant is being branded by SVM as 'SVM Ecosand'.
The new plant will be installed at SVM's Nangal crushing site near Delhi. The site possesses an aggregate production capacity of 150,000 tons of crushed aggregates per month; produced through Metso 300 tph dual stage skid mounted crushing plant. SVM has recently acquired mines and 200 tph plant in Sikar, Rajasthan. The produced aggregates from Nangal are supplied by SVM to Delhi and NCR based construction companies.
Talking about the new 'OreMax' plant, Mr. Manish Madhogaria, Associate Director, CDE Asia says, "Following the close study of requirements of SVM to produce sand out of the stone dust with higher level of impurities between 25-30% silica content in Nangal region as compared to 15-18% content in stones from other parts of the country, 'OreMax' plant featuring 'dual pass technology' was the only suitable choice for the production of manufactured sand. The other advantage for providing this technology is its ability to recycle 90-95% of water, required for washing, much essential based on acute water scarcity in Delhi and NCR."
Explaining the relevance of the plant for the required operation of SVM, Mr. Madhogaria says, "the unique washing system has an integrated and high efficiency hydrocyclone based fines processing unit. It offers secondary attrition to the minus-5mm particles through the heavy slurry pumps and high cyclone velocity. The first cyclone pass removes the high percentage of waste solids. The cleaning process does not end here. The inbuilt dual pass technology ensures that the materials obtained from the first stage of washing get another chance and are processed again. This unique process gets tertiary attrition and most importantly it facilitates in the removal of substantial levels of ultrafine to meet the end product requirement."
He adds, "The dual pass technology is also recommended when the end user requires to produce high quality concrete with +M60 grade for railway sleepers by using accurately graded concrete sand with silt content of less than 3%."
The prominent customers of SVM for produced 'Ecosand' are Lafarge India and Leighton India. According to Mr.Venkateswara Rao Alapati, Deputy General Manager Quality, Leighton India, "We have found that in case of river sand very fine particles less than 150 micron are not present. Even if they are present, they are in the form of mud or clay. Comparatively SM Ecosand has particles less than 150 microns in desired quantity of 10-12% in the form of sand. These result in reduced water cement ratio and improve workability and strength. Moreover, on the commercial side, the supply and pricing of manufactured sand from SVM is consistent in comparison to sand from Yamuna in Delhi or Banas River in Rajasthan. Inconsistent supply of river sand is primarily due to logistical issues which happen during the monsoon months."
Flexibility & Value In Operation
Explaining the flexibility in operation, Mr. Madhogaria says, "Based on the requirements of plant owners to optimize operations dovetailing with the need to produce multiple products, the 'OreMax' plant features high levels of flexibility. This is because the plant can simultaneously produce concrete and plaster sand according to the requirements of customers. Furthermore, the other most prominent technical attributes of the plant is that it can also process washed aggregates of 20,10,5-0mm." The 'OreMax' plant can produce concrete sand of -5mm-0.075mm and concrete sand of 2.36 to 0.075mm. The prime value that the 'OreMax' plant will deliver towards optimization of operations is enabling SVM to sell its dust fines earlier lying as stockpile inventory. Further, it will prevent environmental pollution by extensively arresting suspended dust particles, earlier created from the dust fines lying in open following crushing operations."
Featuring 'Programme Logic Control' for automatic plant operations, CDE will provide initial training to the plant operators to produce the required variant of sand besides complete technical and services support. The company will also provide annual maintenance support to the owners of the plant for continuous plant availability.
The demand for manufactured sand is projected to go up in North India owing to planned infrastructure projects involving Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, Dedicated North-West freight Corridor and housing projects in the organized real estate sector requiring higher quality of concrete.