Pit & Quarry, November 2009

The Inland Aggregates Pine Ridge plant is run with a one touch process to keep the operation as efficient as possible It is completely electric with no reliance on diesel power Furthermore the entire operation runs with no reliance on diesel power Were completely electric Kaskiw said And we run the plant with a one touch process to keep the operation as efficient as possible The material flow starts at the dredge and is conveyed in electrically We dont use any loaders or haul trucks he said From there the aggregate is run through a primary dry screen where it gets separated into two sources 1 in minus and 1 in to 6 in These two sources are stockpiled on a concrete reclaim tunnel with feed gates located under each aggregate pile employing gravity to move the material through to the finishing phase of the process The flow of material through those feed gates is controlled by a variable feed drive on the belt feeder which allows us to fine tune the proper proportion for the recipe that were running at the time Kaskiw said On the finishing side each material stream is then conveyed through a primary and secondary triple deck screen for additional sizing a sand tank to accurately blend and classify the mix and a log washer to clean the finished product This set up allows Pine Ridge to not only produce a broad range of finished products on demand but do so in a fuelefficient manner Its a true one touch electric process The material comes out of the dredge is classified on the tunnel and goes back into the system for classifying and finishing Kaskiw said Theres no reliance on motors or diesel W A S H I N G C L A S S I F Y I N G Kaskiw admits that the concept is not entirely exclusive to Pine Ridge We Inland Aggregates have an operation on the West Coast with a similar balance of product issue where this thought process was first started he said But the scale of the Pine Ridge facility puts it in a class of its own Weve invested close to CAN 27 million in this entire operation but were already running at close to capacity most of the time he added With a market that extends roughly 30 40 miles from the Pine Ridge plant there is plenty of economic activity to consume its material www kpijci com www pitandquarry com November 2009 PIT QUARRY 35