State-of-the-art mixing technology for Elsäßer concrete factory
The Egon Elsäßer Company exists since 1972 and was a founder member of the Syspro Group. The family business, based in Geisingen, employs 160 people who produce cavity walls, solid walls, balcony slabs, balustrade elements and stairways according to individual planning specifications.
Over the past decades, the company has invested continuously in high-modern, automatic production lines. In 2016, they decided to replace the existing, 20-year-old mixing plant by building a completely new mixing plant to respond to the increasing market demands. Elsäßer opted for a fully-automatic mixing plant from Pemat with two PMPR 3000 planetary mixers
Competitive edge due to innovative mixing technology
Together with the Prilhofer planning office, Elsäßer developed a plant concept and defined the requirements for the new mixing plant. An invitation to tender was compiled based on this in which the Pemat company in Freisbach in the Rhineland-Palatinate came out on top.
Pemat convinced the company in Geisingen with its competence and long years of experience. Founded in 1977 by Walter Stahl, Pemat is celebrating its 40th birthday this year. The company manufactures high-quality mixing technology and designs mixing plants to meet the individual requirements of its international customers.
Mixers that are optimally integrated into the plant concept
Elsäßer contracted Pemat to plan and build the mixing plant. An in-line silo concept was chosen which optimally considers both the process requirements of the operational organisation and the site conditions.
The mixing plant concept starts with the feeding of the aggregates. A truck tips the aggregates into a ground-level, fully enclosed hopper. When the hopper is full, the building gate closes and does not open again until the feed hopper has been emptied completely. This avoids incorrect filling of the hopper. The material is transported by a withdrawal belt conveyor from the feed hopper into a bucket elevator. This conveys the material vertically upwards to fill the eight chambers of the silo by means of distributor belts. Probes determine the filling levels which are communicated daily by e-mail by means of the Bikotronic plant control system to the aggregate supplier. He takes over the consignment and logistic control on behalf of Elsäßer so that no bottlenecks in the supply occur.
Dosing valves are fitted to the bottom of the silo chambers. These feed the material onto a weigh-belt with continuous weighing until the nominal weight of the respective aggregate is reached. The weigh-belt transports the material into a Pemat skip hoist which passes it over to one of the two mixers by means of a two-way distributor system.
High-performance planetary mixers from Pemat
Two Pemat PMPR 3000 planetary mixers with whirler were used, each with a compacted concrete output of 2 cbm. The mixers are equipped with a reinforced gearbox up to 160 KW and a motor of 110 KW. This easily meets all the requirements for manufacturing high-quality concrete. Both mixers have a humidity probe and are controlled fully automatically and exactly according to recipe by the Bikotronic plant control system. The interaction between innovative mixing technology and intelligent control technology leads to a very high repetitive accuracy of every single mixture and thus to a consistently high quality of the end product.
Each of these two mixers is equipped with two discharge doors so that every mixer can feed the material into one of two bucket conveyor systems. This ensures an absolutely flexible material supply because every production line can be provided with concrete even during maintenance work. Both mixers were also equipped with the Pemat high-pressure wash-out system to keep downtimes during cleaning to a minimum. The mixers are cleaned automatically and the water is fed into the recycling system through one of the discharge doors.
Challenging complex task
The complexity of the overall task with the mixing plant as well as a recycling system and the connection of a new Dudik bucket conveyor system presented a great challenge to all those involved which had to be mastered together. Thanks to everyone’s commitment, the complete plant which supplies concrete to all production lines could be put into automatic operation at the end of March 2017.
