Aggregate Industry Case Study: LafargeHolcim Group: Aggregate Industries, Bardon Hill Mobile Ready-Mix Site

EXPEL STOPS EQUIPMENT DOWNTIME CAUSED BY WATER AND OIL EMULSION FLUIDS IN COMPRESSED AIRLINES AT 6 MOBILE READY-MIX CONCRETE SITES!

Aggregate Industries

About the customer

Aggregate Industries is a proud member of the LafargeHolcim Group, which is the leading global building materials and solutions company with around 70,000 employees in over 80 countries.

Aggregate Industries produce and supply an array of construction materials including everything from aggregates, asphalt, ready-mix concrete and precast concrete products. Additionally, they produce, import and supply construction materials, export aggregates and offer national road surfacing and contracting services. They operate 200 sites and employ around 3,700 people.

Project Background

Steve Pointon is the Operations Manager for 6 mobile concrete plants across the UK. Mr Pointon and his team were experiencing frequent and expensive problems caused by water, oil emulsion fluids and solid particulates in compressed air lines. The most prevalent problems for Mr Pointon and his team were:

 

  • The aeration pads on silos getting damp causing clogging, leading to thousands of pounds worth of avoidable equipment damage and downtime.
  • Water freezing in compressed airlines in the winter months. This would lead to blocks of ice causing blockages in pipes which was causing loss of production.
  • Water causing faulty operation of solenoid valves, making all 6 sites considerably less efficient than what they could be if Expel was installed.

“Refrigerant dryers are a lot more expensive than Expel and not easy to maintain, I can’t maintain a dryer myself, whereas we can maintain Expel ourselves”.

Steve Pointon – Operations Manager – Aggregate Industries

Why did Aggregate Industries choose Expel?

 

Other filters that Steve had prior to installing Expel required replacement filter elements, which were causing unnecessary effort to maintain, continual costs for replacing the elements and production downtime because they were not solving the problem of liquids and solid particulates in compressed air lines. Expel is a high efficiency 1 micron compressed air filter which requires zero maintenance. In fact, Steve has found Expel so effective that he can run his mobile sites by using Expel alone and as the only method of preparation for the compressed air, this means effective placement of Expel can eliminate the need for a refrigerant dryer.

Expel can remove the need for dryer if it is installed just before the point of use. Most compressed airlines at aggregate sites are fairly long and any water vapour present in the air by the time it has reached the point of use has had time to cool and condense to become liquid water. This liquid water is what causes the problems and is what is removed by Expel right before the equipment it is intended to protect. Therefore, a dryer is no longer required because the water has already condensed way before the point of use.

We are so glad that we were able to help Steve Pointon and his team, now we want to help you make substantial savings too! Here at Original AVG we are great believers in value for money, if you are paying continual costs for inadequate filters, replacing tools and equipment regularly, spending far too much money on running a dryer or receiving countless problems with water in your compressed air lines, we can help!

Turn off your expensive dryer and just install Expel as a point of use filter!

“I am very happy with Expel; I would highly recommend it”.

Steve Pointon – Operations Manager – Aggregate Industries

THE RESULTS

Reduces Downtime

Reduces costs

Reduces maintenance

Increased productivity

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