Asphalt plants need to be efficient and reliable to meet their production quotas. Asphalt is one of the most challenging materials to work with effectively. At 350°F to 400°F, it’s a thin liquid – but for every 25°F it cools, its viscosity doubles. If you don’t maintain your temperature throughout the plant it can be very hard on your pipes and equipment.
The flow on effects of low asphalt temperature are an equipment nightmare. Pumps are easily damaged; more viscous liquids have completely different fluid dynamics which will affect how they travel through your piping network.
This is why running an asphalt plant can be so challenging. Plenty of technical expertise is required to make sound management decisions.
In few industrial applications does your selection of equipment and monitoring matter more than at an asphalt plant.
What Challenges Must Asphalt Plants Overcome To Reach Peak Productivity?
The challenges of poor equipment and materials handling choices can mean that an asphalt plant faces any of these headaches on any given day of the week:
Reduced Production Rates: Issues any of your equipment cause interruptions to material flow, lowering production output. This can result in missed deadlines, delayed projects, upset clients and ultimately reduced profitability.
Emulsion System and Additive Injection Problems: Inconsistent emulsion quality and delays in production from pump issues can impact product quality and project timelines, potentially affecting customer satisfaction and profitability.
Maintenance and Downtime: When equipment experiences an unplanned outage it disrupts production schedules, causing lost output and missed deadlines. "If the flow-on effects of an outage mean that your plant has stopped producing finished goods, then the actual cost of that outage isn’t just the parts and labor - it also includes the units you could have produced had the plant been operational.
Eliminating unplanned outages through preventative and predictive maintenance is an overlooked opportunity to boost productivity which in turn will boost profits.
Inconsistent Mix Quality: Fluctuations in temperature and binder flow from glitches with equipment can compromise product performance, potentially necessitating rework. If you are determined to meet the quality demands of your clients then keeping your mix quality to specification is vital but very hard to do with under-performing equipment.
Increased Operating Costs: Inefficient combustion from something as innocuous as inconsistent air pressure results in higher energy consumption, and increased maintenance costs from faulty equipment contribute to higher operating expenses. Higher operating costs mean lower profits and worse still less capacity to invest to lower your expenses creating a negative feedback loop.
Safety Concerns: Between the noxiousness of asphalt and the heat required to keep the plant operational plus the particulates that can become airborne during transportation or conveying, there are a lot of risks for a plant manager to worry about to keep the work force safe.
Environmental Issues: From waste product collection to noise, to volatile organic compounds, nitrogen and sulfur compounds, to organic chemicals that need to be kept out of the local water table, there are plenty of environmental risks to manage and mitigate for your plant to be successful and to keep regulators at bay.
How Can We Help Commercial Asphalt Plants Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity?
When you choose to work with Pye-Barker, you’re not just investing in equipment—you’re investing in a partner dedicated to your success. Whether you’re looking to optimize an existing process, improve product quality, or overcome operational challenges, we will find the solutions that deliver results.
Clients who work with us receive:
Improved Production Capacity: We specialize in helping our clients get their cement plants performing to specification. We ensure that each process works as it was designed. We will achieve that with equipment that is energy efficient to operate and has the lowest chance of breakdown possible. We will help you identify and resolve production constraints and bottlenecks to increase your production so that we can find ways to maximize your systems’ output.
Meeting Quality Specifications: Through better material flow, better fuel supply and stable temperature control we can help you meet your specifications more often for your asphalt mixes. Reducing material wastage, rework costs, and enhances customer satisfaction.
Reduced Operating Costs: Reduced downtime and breakdowns, increased energy efficiency and improved fuel flow to your burner all help to lower your cost base. Any time we can achieve the same output with reduced costs means that your profits have gone up.
Increased Uptime: The more production time your plant has, the more production capacity you have to fulfil additional client orders and generate profits from the same set of overheads. The only additional costs for meeting those orders are your input costs.
Meet And Exceed Safety Standards: We can help you meet and exceed safety standards, so your staff are safe. From efficient combustion to dust control to contaminant control, we can help your plant minimize its risk of accidents and pass inspections.
Meeting Green Goals: Our approach to going green is that it has to produce an ROI today. Too many green ideas have no chance to deliver a positive return on investment. When the focus is on reducing waste, reducing power consumption then you can get greener while at the same time cutting your costs which gives you the financial capacity to invest additional greening initiatives.
Systems Designed for You: Too many engineering solutions providers offer one-size-fits-all solutions, we guarantee that anything we design and install for you will meet your requirements or we will replace it with something that will.
With You For the Long Haul: Since 1936, Pye-Barker has focused on working with their clients to meet their needs for today and setting them up for the best future success. We offer preventative and predictive maintenance services for our clients to make sure all your equipment is maintained and continues to operate to its specification over its entire lifecycle.
How Can We Help You Maximize Your Productivity And Profits?
Pye-Barker offers a range of products and services that can help asphalt plants reduce costs, increase uptime and improve product quality including:
• Energy audits
• Compressed air audits
• Pumps, including
o Viking positive displacement pumps (heating and jacketing options available)
o Centrifugal pumps
o Vacuum pumps
o Dosing/metering pumps
• Pump filtration systems
• Compressed air systems (the right compressor, storage, drying and filtration)
o Oil-free air compressors
• Nitrogen Generation Systems
• Compressed air system controller set up and configuration
• Blowers
• Customized blower systems
• Repairs and maintenance for any system we sell
• Integrated skid design, construction and commissioning
• Spare parts for all products we sell
• Inventory management of parts of complete pumps to fulfil urgent needs (by contractual arrangement)
• Common-sense greening your operation (such as reducing energy consumption and waste to increase profits)
How We Can Help An Asphalt Plant Increase Productivity And Reduce Costs
A client of ours is an asphalt plant in Southern Georgia. They were looking to increase both their production output and production efficiency. They had more business than they could take on and were forced to turn it away because of three roadblocks to achieving the throughput they were looking for:
1. Reduced Production Rates: Interruptions, material flow inconsistencies, and equipment malfunctions resulted in lower production output, missed deadlines, and decreased profitability.
2. Inconsistent Mix Quality: Fluctuations in temperature, binder flow, and dust collection inefficiencies led to compromised mix quality, material wastage, and potential customer dissatisfaction.
3. Increased Operating Costs: Inefficient combustion, higher energy consumption, and maintenance expenses escalated operating costs, adversely affecting the plant's profitability and financial stability.
After talking to us about these issues, we agreed the best way forward was to conduct an audit of their plant and equipment audit to identify the root causes. Here’s what we found:
Inefficient Burner Operation: The compressor supplying the air for combustion control suffered from inconsistent air pressure and insufficient flow, impacting asphalt mix quality. This in turn ballooned operating costs due to waste and reduced total production capacity because of the extra rework required on orders.
Inefficient Heat Transfer System: Heating their asphalt pumps with hot oil meant that plans for expansion were being delayed because of the additional costs of expanding the heat transfer system to additional locations.
Based on their compressed audit we were able to reconfigure their compressed air system and modify it with more suitable storage and make some improvements to the piping system design. At the same time a leak survey meant we were able increase system efficiency. With all of this changes to the system we only needed to add a small trim compressor to meet demand spikes in compressed air demand rather than having to upsize their main compressor.
After explaining that we could heat their new pump sites with electric pump heaters rather than expanding their heat transfer system, at a fraction of the cost we were able to help them expand their operations to handle the work they were turning away.
For a fraction of what they were expecting to spend this plant was able to increase their production capacity by 12% by being able to operate longer without breakdowns and outages plus more of their production passed quality control which meant that they were spending less time and other resources on rework.
Finally the upgrades to the system helped reduce their operational costs by 8.7%.
Delivering these upgrades has meant that this client is now open to Pye-Barker’s maintenance program so that they can keep their systems operating at this higher level of output.
About Pye-Barker’s Engineering Services For Asphalt Plants
Pye-Barker helps asphalt plants across Georgia and Florida cut their production costs while maintaining or improving the consistency of their products. We have been distributing Viking Pumps in Georgia for over 48 years. During that time, we’ve been the supplier of choice for all types of manufacturers that handle asphalt.
With over 50 years of engineering experience across every part of the engineered solutions industry, there isn’t a problem you have that we haven’t solved before. We have audited and improved operations at hundreds of facilities throughout Georgia and Florida. Our audits have routinely helped our clients eliminate tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of waste each year.
What To Do Next
If you wish to improve your asphalt plant’s efficiency, the first step is a comprehensive audit of your operations. We will provide you with the data you need to make informed decisions. You can use that information to prioritize actionable steps to quickly start saving money and increasing production.
Most customers who take advantage of our ‘low-cost/quick-win’ recommendations report vast cost savings and continue on with our full recommendations capturing even more savings.
To schedule your operations audit, call 404-363-6000 or send an email to [email protected]
