More working hours while turning waste into sellable product at Rochefort limestone quarry in Belgium

In November 2021, Jean-Marc Fonzé contacted Jean-Philippe Rezette from BiA, a dealer for Carriére des Limites' quarrying plant, to discuss alternatives for their previous sand tertiary impact crusher. They were frustrated with its dust generation, lack of production volume, and flexibility.

Business was good at Carriere des Limites Rochefort quarry in Belgium´s Ardennes reqion and the limestone quarry has been producing nearly two million tonnes aggregates and sand per year. But the inefficiencies of its impact crusher had the potential to harm the supply of high-quality manufactured sand to their majority ready-mixed concrete-producing clients.

BiA had previously supplied Carriére des Limites with six Nordberg and Metso-branded primary and secondary crushers for the company’s limestone-aggregate-product production, and Rezette knew Metso had just launched the HRC 8 high-pressure roll crusher. He got in touch with Oldemar Meneses, Metso’s manager of impactor and sand solutions, based at the company’s Mâcon, eastern France facility. He and arranged Meneses to visit Carriére des Limites to discuss the potential benefits of deploying an HRC 8 plant at the Rochefort quarry.

Adjustable HRC 8 crusher turns stone dust waste into high quality product

“With our old impact crusher, we were generating around 60,000 tonnes of stone dust waste a year. That is a lot of waste - rubbish that we cannot sell,” says Fonzé, director of Carriére des Limites’ aggregates division. “We wanted to find a machine that would work more slowly, generating less dust, and could be easily altered to make different types of sand or aggregates product.

“We saw the test results from an HRC 8 processing limestone samples, and we trust BIA and Metso. We know they are serious people and have a long working relationship with them. If other manufacturers proposed this solution, we would not have chosen it.”

Carriére des Limites has had its HRC 8 since early September and Fonzé and Rochefort quarry manager Hugues Antoine say they are pleased with its initial performance.

Carriére des Limites has had its HRC 8 since early September and Fonzé and Rochefort quarry manager Hugues Antoine say they are pleased with its initial performance.

“The cubicity of the final product and quality of the fines are good,” confirms Antoine. “I like the fact that we can easily adjust the speed and pressure of the HRC 8 crusher. We are waiting for results from HRC 8 tests done on our limestone at Metso Mâcon.”

“Before we had the HRC 8 we had to stop production when our four different product size stockpiles were full. Now we have a crusher that can more easily switch between processing different sized products to avoid stoppages. As such, it gives more working hours and optimises production, while generating less waste,” explains Fonzé.

Metso says that its HRC 8 high-pressure roll crusher can turn large volumes of quarry waste into high-quality saleable product. As demonstrated at Carriére des Limites, the model is designed to ensure energy-efficient operation, flexible operating parameters, high productivity, increased availability, rapid installation time, and safe and simple change-out of long-life wear components.

Fine-tuning sand production with HRC 8's easy-to-use automation technology

Unlike Carriére des Limites’ previous impact crusher setup, the HRC 8 eliminates the problem of a high-speed rotor generating very high energy and repair costs and unscheduled downtime. Fonzé and his team are finding that the HRC 8 plant offers flexibility to adjust the pressure applied to the feed material, while simultaneously making the product gradation finer or coarser as required.

All this is obtained simply by touching the screen of the HRC 8’s crusher automation technology, the IC80C.

Commenting on the IC80C, Antoine says: “It’s easy for me to use. It gives me a clear on-screen view of the amount of material going through the machine, the production power and speed, and the pressure on the pistons.”

As well as serving its manufactured sand production needs, Carriére des Limites is also finding that the HRC 8 can effectively re-crush its 8x20mm product to achieve high-spec 8x16mm and 2x0mm products. The HRC 8 also gives the company the option to re-crush 2x8mm rock and maximise 2x0mm product as demand dictates.

“The biggest thing for me regarding the HRC 8 is how it performs and wears over time, given the constant stone-on-stone pressure. It is not a big machine,” says Fonzé.

Meneses is quick to reassure him. “Given the low silica content in the material that the plant is working with, and the HRC 8’s lower operating speed, I don’t see any problems with excessive wear.” He adds: “Metso’s main wear-parts warehouse for Europe is in Belgium. We have other HRC 8 plants being commissioned in Germany and Norway, and all the wear parts for backing up these machines will be stored here.”

Original version of this article has been published by Aggregates Business.

Further information

The customer has Metso NP1620 as the primary crusher. The secondary crusher Metso NP15 works in closed circuit with a DD screen to produce 38X22mm and 22X0mm product. This product is then sent to dual triple deck wet screens where they make several products depending on the screen media configuration. The main final products are:

-20X16mm

-16X8mm

-8X2mm

-2X0mm

The surplus depends on their market demand, and any product can be a surplus at any moment.

The main tertiary product feed is 20X14mm.