Creteheads, Owen Blevins, Concreteanswers.tv bringing you the internet’s most passionate show about concrete plants and equipment. I’m standing on tens of thousands of tons of returned concrete from one year’s worth of production. How do we make all of this disappear, profitably you ask? Check this out! Part 1: It All Starts Here I’m standing at the truck wash out area where we can have up to three trucks simultaneously discharge. Down here is one of three buttons, which, when pressed will discharge a specific amount of grey water into the trucks at each one of the truck stations. If you look up above you’ll see one of three discharge pipes and these three discharge pipes put grey water into the trucks. Yes we use grey water; we use that for a couple of reasons. Number one to conserve fresh water or potable water, number two, grey water is actually a great way to clean out a truck, why? There are suspended solids in the grey water and it actually causes friction on the inside of the barrel and it removes more of the cementicious product that the truck is coming back with to wash out into the trough with. This trough, of course, funnels all of the returned concrete into the chamber, the first chamber which is called the buffer, of the BIBKO 4000, which we’ll see in a couple minutes when we go inside. This is one of two screws that were installed as an option for this particular producer. It’s called a pump discharge conveyor or PDC for short and it’s named as it exactly implies. It’s used to clean out pumps or pump trucks that have a lower discharge height and need to have something at ground level. It’s a large 88x78 opening; you can back up dumps into this if you have RCC, you need to clean out the truck from there or you have a pump truck and you want to wash it out into here. This discharge screw is designed to take the material and move it up into the trough where it’s handled just like any returned concrete from a ready mix truck. Now, what makes this screw unusual and very unique, BIBKO exclusive here, is this urethane blanket underneath it. The reason they use a urethane blanket is because it has much, much less wear and you have very close tolerances so you can get water up this screw. You don’t want water to pool down here; you want to get all your material to this trough and these flights as they wear, and they all do, can be adjusted to maintain that tight tolerance or clearance to make sure you can get all your material up it. Standing at the material discharge area; to my left is sand and to my right is stone. The screen above the sand pile here, of course, separates the sand and the stone. And above that screen is the screw which of course takes all the material coming out of the BIBKO 4000 and deposits it onto the screen. We’ve got a really nice sand product here, very low cementicious product here as you can see, really clean, very nice stuff. The producer will take the material, blend it back in with their fresh sand and then, of course, use all of it to make fresh concrete. If you come around to the other pile here with me, we’ll take a look at the stone. This stone will go from this bin here and will go right into the material handling system where it will be used to make new concrete. Part 2: Processing Returned Concrete Ok, so now we’ll go inside and take a look at the two chambers in the BIBKO 4000. The first of which is the buffer. Inside the buffer we see plows and urethane shoes. These plows take all of the concrete being discharged by the drivers and move it into the paddle wheel and these buckets. The buckets turn and they pick up the material and discharge it into this chute that then takes it from the buffing chamber that then drops it into the wash chamber. Concrete from the buffer is moved into the second chamber or the wash chamber, where the buckets drop it onto a chute. All the concrete is dumped into that wash chamber and as it’s moved across the bottom of the wash chamber through a series of urethane shoes and these steel plows. It’s further separated and washed so now you’re separating your sand, your stone, your water and your cement until it gets to this second row of buckets. The first paddle wheel as solid buckets, the second paddle wheel as solid buckets so the water can drain, while those buckets lift the material out of the water and onto an incline screw, which then discharges the material onto a screen. The incline screw coming out of the BIBKO is designed identically to the PDC that we looked at outside for pump trucks. The difference being we don’t have quite the tolerance between the urethane blanket and the flights on the screw. We have about a half inch clearance and that’s designed so the water can flow back into the BIBKO and we can have as dry as possible material coming out onto the screen above. The important aspect of any reclaimer is the maintenance process and BIBKO has designed that into each and every unit that they make. Something as simple as the water level, you’ll notice here that the chute is about six inches below; if you can see where that chute drops down into one of the pits. It’s about six inches below where the shaft is. Well what does that mean? It means that your bearings and your seals are out of the muck. Believe it or not, not ever manufacturer designs it that way. They’ve got their bearings and seals sitting in this muck and that really shortens the life. They’re not easy to replace and they’re expensive, so BIBKO’s gone that extra mile for you making sure that you can extend the life of your equipment. BIBKO provides laminated lubrication charts in close proximity to the lubrication points, such as this zerk fitting right here. So your personal know when and where to lubricate critical components. This is the MCC or motor control center for the BIBKO. This is the brains of the system. Here we have housed the PLC, all the starters, the breakers, all the level indicators, all the transformers. This comes completely prewired from the factory and it can be wired for 230 or 460 volts dependent upon your individual requirements. Part 3: Water: Zero Discharge, Zero Waste Maintenance is an important component of any reclaimer and BIBKO’s no exception, but what BIBKO does that separates them from others is they do things like put a winch and a davit here that allows us to raise each pump and inspect things like the impeller and all the connections and make sure that everything is operating correctly. We recommend you do this once a week to maintain the operational efficiency of your BIBKO. When we’re measuring the water level we use this sonar, which is made by Endress Hauser and it helps us determine what level the water is in both pits. The second meter is a density meter or turbidity meter, which is made by Endress Hauser as well. This meter is extended below the water line and relays the exact, specific gravity of the water back up to the automation in the batch control room, where they can then use that information to then blend the grey water with fresh water to make fresh concrete. Depending on the season you may need to chill or heat your water. BIBKO’s solution is to use a false bottom. They use steel plates in the floor, they’re about four inches thick and they run water, chilled water or heated water through them in order to maintain the temperature in the pits. This is part of the plumbing for that chilled or heated water. This manifold runs three pumps: one provides fresh water to the BIBKO, the middle one is just for wash water around the plant and third one provides heated or chilled water for the false bottoms to maintain temperature in the pits. An 11 foot shaft and a 54 inch diameter agitator are at the bottom of the pit. They’re attached to the motor and gear box. Well, BIBKO knew there would be a lot of stress and torque on that gear box, so they put urethane bushings at all attach points on the gear box to help eliminate the stress. If you look here you can actually see the movement of the gear box caused by the agitator blades, this significantly increases bearing life. I’ve raised this inspection hatch so you can look down in here and see the agitators in action. They’re agitating the water, keeping the solids suspended. It’s 54 inch diameter blade on each one of these agitators and they turn at about 60 revolutions per minute. The batch plant gets its grey water from this four inch hose, which delivers the grey water along a 400 foot run to a holding tank in the batch plant. This is where it all comes together. We’re in the batch room right now and behind me are each one of the three read outs that correspond to the densiometers down in the pit that will show us the specific gravity of each one of the pits. The third pit itself interfaces with the computers automation in the batch room and it allows us to blend grey water with potable water and, of course, it knows the specific gravity and can actually pull back or hold out on sand or fines and increase the water. And when you call for a gallon of water you’re only getting a certain percentage of that gallon because there are fines mixed in with that water and they displace the water. So the automation does its job by adding additional water and holding back on fines. One of the final phases of this project was to enclose the machine with a building. The owner wanted to maintain a specific temperature, so we chose Star Building Systems who erected this building in about two weeks. It went up with no fuss, no muss. I’m standing on a pad, a concrete pad that’s actually heated with radiant heat to keep the drivers from slipping and falling on ice in the winter. Creteheads I hope you had as much fun learning about the BIBKO as I had telling you about it. This producer was a lot of fun to work with. We’re able to get a great project done here. Do in part to the producer’s passion and motivation to get this job done the right way. We left this producer knowing just as much about BIBKO as we do, which of course will translate to low maintenance and good operational efficiencies. Creteheads, there’s a great case study at maconcrete.com and go to concretereclaiming.com where there’s a boat load of resources and information. Make sure you check that out too and you know we love you at Concreteanswers.tv. See ya
