Flexi-Mat solution for asphalt recycling

Mississippi-based Southern Crushing produces recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) for customers in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas. The company gained a contract in the northern region of the latter state that meant that it had to screen asphalt in the winter, which created a challenge because of the sticky nature of wet asphalt. Southern was experiencing binding and pegging of the 12 mm (0.5 in) steel woven wire in its two Cedarapids 1.2 m x 4.3 m (4 ft x 14 ft) two deck tensioned screen boxes, which are fed by an Eagle 500-05 crusher. This forced it to shut down operations for 20 minutes every two hours.

Major Wire Industries Limited’s Flex-Mat 3 high performance, self-cleaning screen media provided a better solution. Available for flat-surface and tensioned screen decks, it allows producers to increase screen open area, create more screening action with the vibrating wires and eliminate blinding and pegging problems to achieve more throughput of spec material. Its distinctive lime-green polyurethane strips bond individual wires and allow them to vibrate independently at different frequencies. With more screening action, more properly sized material falls through instead of sticking to the wire.

“Now, we use Flex-Mat 3 Tensioned panels on the bottom deck of one screen with a ½-inch opening,” owner Tim Lipsmeyer stated. “We are able to produce spec RAP and clean out fines from crushed concrete no matter how wet it is. We can even screen in a complete downpour.”