A concrete batching plant machine mixes various ingredients to make concrete. These materials include water, air, aggregates, cement and fly ash. It consists of a variety of parts and machine mixer units, conveyors, aggregate and cement batchers, cement silos etc. A concrete batching plant is a machine in which ingredients of concrete are mixed and blended homogeneously to obtain concrete of desired strength and quality. The plants can be used wet or dry and has a wide array of configurations and production types including Ready Mix, Precast & Prestressed, Central Mix, and RCC.
Market trends in concrete batching plants
Based on value, the batching plant segment is one the largest in India’s concrete equipment market. The growth of the segment is led by growing customer preference for high capacity and technologically advanced batching plants. Factors such as the increasing number of construction projects, shorter completion time, and demand for customized solutions by end-users are further fuelling the growth of this segment.
One sector wherein the batching plant is seeing huge potential is high rise buildings. Quality concrete is necessary for strong and high-rise buildings. The concrete batching plant should have the latest and advanced technology features and manufacturers are investing on this. The Plants are now consuming almost 15% less power than others and the R & D team is focusing on how to cut down further on that. The use of modern control systems has further given control on the downtime of the machine. Companies are now offering extra services like keeping spares at dealers for immediate delivery; providing customers with faster moving spares, and keeping track of inventory of spares at dealers and customers.
Advantages of concrete batching plants
Preparing ready mix concrete on the construction site is a time-consuming process. You can eliminate your construction cost by using a batching plant for your project. Each load of concrete is produced on-site. The production and delivery are done in minutes when we use a concrete batching plant. Adjust your concrete production as per the requirements and get the most out of it. There are several benefits that the concrete batching plant has to offer to construction workers:
- Mixing raw materials with stable, advanced production technology, using computer control, accurate measurement, testing means complete, stable and reliable quality, rich high strength, thus greatly improving the construction quality level building (structure).
- Construction units use commercial mixing stations, the construction speed increases, reducing equipment, racks, pipes, templates and other turnover rental costs; owners of units can shorten the construction cycle, reduce investment risk.
- Due to the stable and reliable quality of the commercial mixing plant, the design unit can avoid the “fat beam”, “fat column” and “heavy plate” according to the design of the mixing station”.
- The mix mixing station using mineral active admixtures (slag and fly ash and admixture, etc.) can greatly improve the long-term performance of concrete waterproof, antifreeze, anti cracking and abrasion resistance, and can improve the service life of a building.
- Improves the construction organization, reduces labor intensity, reduces construction management costs, technical difficulty and quality risk.
The main purpose of using a this plant is to produce homogenous and uniform concrete. The plant must produce concrete consistently in batches one after the other in the same proportions. Based on mixers and location there are different types of batching plants available, each of them with features and applications are explained below.
Different types of concrete batching plants
Concrete Batching Plant-Based on Location
Mobile concrete batching plant
Modern mobile plants come with a stable main chassis allowing extreme durability, safe transportation, continuous long-life operation and sensitive weighing by minimizing the vibrations to the scales. All the equipment necessary for the operation of the batch plant is installed on the main chassis and is being transported on it. Water buffer tank, water pump, additive tank and additive pumps along with air compressor come preinstalled on the main chassis. All the equipment is pre-wired and tested. Concrete plants with 2 complete sets of screw conveyors, filters and other silo equipment can be transported with the help of only one single trailer truck. Mobile concrete batching plants come pre-wired with maximum equipment installed to ensure fast installation on site. Typically a standard mobile plant can be installed in 1-2 days. There has also been the development of Containerized concrete batching plants recently. The containerized concrete batch plant is a new type of batching plant. It consists of a mixing system, control system, material storage system, weighing system, conveying system and others. Also, the container mixing plant owns the features such as small footprint, quick installation, convenient transportation and so on. Compared with the traditional concrete plant, the container mixing plant does not need to set the legs and mounting brackets, eliminating basic design and construction.
Stationary concrete batching plant
Stationary Plants are often composed of huge twin shaft mixers that are designed to work at full capability, efficiency and reliability for a variety of large-scale and high-quality concrete production. Stationary concrete production equipment is built to offer maximum rated production capacity and long work hours. The new models are furnished mainly with twin shaft mixers for maximized capacity, the plants are also available with Planetary mixers and batch sizes could be modified. The Stationary Plants are available in various capacities ranging from 30 m3 to 240 m3 per hour of compacted concrete output. In the current Stationary concrete plants, the aggregates are stored in horizontal bins. The gathering conveyor belt runs below the bins where the weighing of aggregates takes place and the aggregates are then discharged onto the charging conveyor. Pneumatically operated gates are provided for discharge of the aggregate onto the gathering conveyor. The material is all weighed accurately and transferred to the twin shaft mixer through a slinger conveyor. The new batching plants also come with the Skip Hoist and Belt arrangement option for mixer loading. The news models can adopt silica dosing and some special additives very easily.
Concrete Batching Plants- Based on Mixers
Transit/ Dry mix concrete batching plant
If there is a quite long distance to the construction site, a dry concrete batching plant is an ideal choice for the manufacturers. On the way to the construction site, the drum of a mixer truck can keep rotating to prevent the mixed concrete from hardening and ensure the freshness of the materials. Dry concrete batching plants have sand, gravel, and cement feeding to batching plants that pass the numerical or manual scale. Modern-day dry mix concrete plant consists of the cement silos, feeding system, control system, weighing system and mixing system. Cement silos are the container to keep and supply raw materials such as cement, sand, and fly ash according to the necessity of the production. The feeding system is a bridge to connect the aggregates and the mixing system. The accuracy of the weighing system determines the quantity of the mixed materials, so it has a great effect on the quality of mixed concrete. The mixing system just mixes the materials without water. As a result, the mixer truck is important to convey and mix the concrete. The control system is the core of the whole plant. Workers operate the concrete equipment in the control room so the full-automation can be achieved.
Wet mix Concrete Batching Plant
Wet mix batch concrete plant is easy to transport and install due to its portable movement. Wet mix concrete batching plants can be classified into two knis: stationary type wet concrete plant and mobile type wet mix concrete batch plant. If you have many construction projects to finish, and the distance is far away from each other, you can invest in several small stationary wet batch plant, otherwise, you can choose one big mobile type wet batching plant, when you finish this project, you can disassemble this plant, then transport it to another project site. Latest-model adopts a twin shaft paddle mixer, which has a strong mixing quality. This can ensure there is no or less residual in the twin shaft concrete mixer, save materials and save cost. With a Central Mix plant, all loads see the same mixing action and there is an initial quality control point when discharging from the central mixer.
Conclusion
Based on value, the batching plant segment is one of the largest segments in the Indian concrete equipment market. The growth of the segment is led by growing customer preference for high capacity and technologically advanced batching plants. Moreover, factors such as the increasing number of construction projects, shorter completion time, and the demand for customized solutions by end-users are further fuelling the growth of this segment. Government initiatives towards infrastructure development are further boosting the demand for concrete equipment in India.
