The Lintec CSM4000HRC containerised asphalt batch plant operated by Lu An Highway Industry in China has mixed more than two million tonnes of hot mix asphalt with a high percentage of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP).
After reaching this milestone, it has now finished supporting construction of the S244 regional expressway and other rehabilitation projects in China’s Anhui province.
The installation process began in February 2016 on a site in Lu’An city. The plant began operations the following June, providing hot mix asphalt for the 23.04km Huoqiu Garden to Xuji interchange section of the S244. The plant produced approximately 150,000 tons for the 03 section of the highway, after which the project was completed in 2022.
Having concluded work on the expressway, the equipment has since been used to carry out asphalt pavement repair and maintenance projects on other expressways in Anhui province. To date, total production for the plant has now passed the 2 million ton mark. Thanks to the HRC component in the CSM4000HRC asphalt plant, 40% of the hot mix asphalt was from RAP making it a more environment-friendly choice.
The Lintec CSM4000 asphalt mixing plant with a 320 tph capacity paired with the HRC hot recycling system yielded efficient integration of RAP with exceptional productivity. The HRC attachment is able to be retrofitted into any Lintec asphalt plant for the processing of milling waste or material excavated from road pavement recycling. This will then result in a significant contribution to the conservation of natural resources while massively reducing the transport and production costs of bitumen and aggregates.
RAP materials are first pulverised in an asphalt recycling granulator and then processed and screened into the required sizes. They are then heated inside the HRC’s parallel drum and kept at the optimum temperature of 140-150 °C before being fed into the RAP buffer silo before weighing. By being kept completely separate from the virgin aggregates until mixing begins, the desired amount of RAP can be chosen for each batch. Thereafter, the RAP will join the separately weighed and screened virgin aggregates in the mixer of the asphalt mixing plant to produce a precisely controlled batch of hot mix asphalt.
The hot recycling system offers several other environmental advantages besides reducing the need for quarrying raw materials.
“Over the years, the superb output and quality of our Lintec CSM4000 has been greatly supported by the hot recycling system. It has given us huge cost savings while ensuring mix quality remains at the highest level – all while being extremely simple to operate,” said a spokesperson from Lu An Highway Industry. “We also really appreciate how easy the asphalt plant is to transport due to its modular, containerised construction. Once it arrives on a new site, this means there is no need to lay concrete foundations, so the plant can be up and running again in record time.”
