Puzzolana’s wide range of Crushing,Screening, Washing, Classifying, and Surface Mining Equipment have become verypopular with customers – a testimony to their superior quality, writes Ramana Kumar.

“To serve the various/specific needs ofusers in the industry, the company offers 2/3/4-stage static crushing andscreening plants on turnkey basis.”

Ramana Kumar, AGM –Application, Puzzolana. 

The sheer importance of aggregatein the construction industry can never be over emphasized. Be it buildings, dams,road construction or railway ballast, there is an ever-growing need for quantityand quality aggregate/sand.

The era of modern or large sizecrushing plants started with the beginning of the widening/4-laning of nationalhighways during the second half of 1990s. To meet aggregate quantity/qualityrequirements of these projects, crushing plants moved from Jaw-Jaw-Jaw to Jaw-Cone-VSIcombination with plant capacities going from 50-100 TPH to 150-200 TPH.

With aggregate qualityspecifications being upgraded to be within the combined Elongation andFlakiness Index (EFI) of 30 per cent (currently 35 per cent), the VerticalShaft Impactor (VSI) made its entry into the market and has become an industrystandard/norm.

Over the last two decades, as roadconstruction projects got larger in size and construction time mandates becameshorter, the need for even larger capacity plants increased. The default/standard200 TPH capacity plants have now gone up to 250 TPH/300 TPH/350 TPH plant sizes.

A majority of the plants installedin the 1990s and 2000s were static plants. Mobile (track-mounted) plants were anovel concept and, due to a substantial premium over fixed plants, they didn’tfind much favour with contractors. However, in the 2010s, as customers startedseeing the benefits of quick installation and dismantling times, the number oftrack plants have steadily increased year on year.

Puzzolana is one of the leadingmanufacturers of Crushing, Screening, Washing, Classifying, and Surface MiningEquipment in India. The product range includes Static/Semi-Mobile/MobileCrushing and Screening equipment for Aggregate and Mining applications as wellas Surface Miners for coal mining.

Equipment are designed andmanufactured indigenously with state-of-the-art, in-house facilities spread outin five major manufacturing facilities in Hyderabad and Dharwad. With dedicatedsales, after-sales support, and widespread distributor network pan-India, morethan 4,500 installation are spread not only across India but also in the MiddleEast, Africa and Malaysia.

To serve the various/specific needsof users in the industry, the company offers 2/3/4-stage static crushing andscreening plants on turnkey basis. Our product portfolio in static/wheeledunits comprises of jaw crushers, cone crushers, vertical shaft impactors,horizontal shaft impactors, hammer mills, secondary sizers, sanders, plastersanders, grizzly feeders, vibrating screens, high speed screens bucket wheelclassifiers, dry classifiers, and hydro-cyclone classifiers.

For road contractors who need fastset-up times and flexibility of relocating a crushing plant at shorter/frequentintervals, Puzzolana offers tracked units, viz. jaw crusher, cone crusher,vertical shaft impactor, horizontal shaft impactor, screen and conveyors. Almostall models have dual power options, i.e. an on-board diesel genset and gridconnectivity.

An in-built changeover switchenables this flexibility, minimizing plant stoppage times. The gridconnectivity offers customers to use the more economical grid power than fossilfuels, resulting in savings in running expenses as well as time consuming paperwork, procurement, storage, transportation, and handling of diesel.

Sand, manufactured

The need for quality sand in theconstruction sector is too well known to need repetition. While sandtraditionally sourced from river beds only has been the accepted norm acrossthe construction industry, it isn’t a ‘ready to use’ material as it has to bewashed to remove silt, clay, and other deleterious material before it can betested/used.

However, as naturally sourced sandfrom river beds gets restricted with most states imposing complete ban due toenvironmental concerns, the importance of manufactured sand has increasedsubstantially in the last 10–15 years. In recent years, even shiploads of sandhave been imported to address this increasing shortfall.

To address this gap between demand andsupply of sand, Puzzolana has developed an exclusive range of sanders. Over theyears, these have become very popular with customers. Since their inception,Puzzolana has more than 200 installations of sanders in the country, atestimony to the increasing need in the market and acceptance.

Today, Puzzolana can provide tailormade crushing and screening plant solutions for plant capacities up to 1,000TPH along with value additions, such as dry fog dust suppression systems, anddust encapsulation systems. These systems keep the dust under control as wellas a safer working environment for the plant operating personnel.