Manufacturing sand: Sicilian lava turned into high quality sand

Pilot Crushtec has delivered a TwisterTrac AC210 mobile vertical shaft impact (VSI) crusher to a quarry near the port town of Catania, on the Italian island of Sicily. It is being used to grind volcanic lava to produce high quality building sand.

Pilot Crushtec export manager Paul Chappel, said, “The crusher is doing an excellent job manufacturing a high quality sand the likes of which have not previously been seen. Now the quarry requires even greater throughput and this could lead to more than one sale.

“Quarries often build up huge stockpiles of un-sellable materials, in this case an 8 to15mm product, while they often have a demand for good quality sand for construction. In Sicily, being the rocky island that it is, the demand for sand is at a premium. There they are reducing the 8mm to 15mm un-sellable material down to minus 5mm sand from lava rock being quarried at the base of Mount Etna.

The TwisterTrac with a throughput capacity of up to 250 tonnes per hour is a tracked, remote controlled plant offering a gradeability of up to 25°.