Investing in sustainable diversity

 

SBM Mineral Processing at Birco

Birco - the expert for surface drainage and rainwater treatment - commissioned a new prefab concrete plant at its headquarters in Baden-Baden, Germany, this year in May. The largely automated plant made by SBM Mineral Processing doubles capacity and paves the way for the development of innovative concrete types with a high percentage of recycling for Birco’s vast product range.

Even after the integration of the traditional family-owned company Birco into the Swiss Müller-Steinag Group at the beginning of this year, the Baden-Baden region remains the hub of the activities of the internationally active specialist for concrete system solutions in surface drainage and rainwater treatment. All concrete elements of the standard series as well as customised solutions are produced in the main production facility in Baden-Baden on two stationary production lines and a flexible floor production for large modules such as channel bodies up to 2,800 mm length and up to 3,000 kg weight. In addition to innovative design and special manufacturing processes Birco particularly relies on customised concrete recipes that are continuously being further developed. The declared goal is the increased utilisation of a wide variety of recycled materials through the targeted use of modern concrete additives to ensure the sustainability of production and products in the long term.

Compact implementation made to measure
This, however, requires a modern mixing plant technology, especially regarding the flexible processing of varying raw materials with precise adherence to and constant monitoring of the specified recipes. The almost 30-year-old prefab concrete plant in Baden-Baden no longer met these requirements. With a maximum of 6 tons of concrete per cycle, it often also led to bottlenecks in the other lines when there was a high workload, for example in the production of large channels, says Birco plant manager Heribert Wunsch in retrospect.

In the beginning of 2021, the decision was made to build a significantly more efficient mixing plant with a new location in the factory, which will not only result in immediate logistical improvements, but will also create space for future production expansions when further infrastructure measures are planned. A total of five manufacturers participated in the tender - SBM Mineral Processing was awarded the contract in August 2021. The Austrian plant engineers not only scored with a concept precisely tailored to the space and production logistics requirements but also with the flexible integration of technical components as requested by the client.

Starting in early summer 2022, the on-site construction works at the essential sidehill cut, the foundation, and the concrete operational building for the factory plant now very tightly positioned at the edge of the factory premises with a base area of some 400 m² only were underway. From September last year on, the mixing plant, the aggregate and cement silos, and the two connected bucket conveyors were installed. After the final calibration of mixing plant and conveying technology had taken place, the old plant was shut down in the beginning of May 2023, and the new plant was put into operation, explains plant manager Heribert Wunsch, summing up the renovation which was largely carried out during ongoing production.

Fully automated and precise
Technically, the new mixing plant is based on the modularly expandable SBM series LINEMIX^® with a connected high aggregate hopper with 400 m³ storage volume. A total of 5 steel silos with a storage capacity of 80 t each – one of them can be divided – are fully automatically fed from the truck feed hopper (20 m³/32 t) via bucket elevator and distribution conveyor belt. A mobile aggregate weighing machine weighs the different grain sizes and transfers them to the bucket elevators of the three mixers. The mixers are supplied with the cement types stored in four silos of 60 tons each as well as dry and liquid additives via separate cement and additive weighing machines. The central control system controls and monitors the high-precision dosing of the individual weighing machines and the water (water content approx. 50 l/m³ concrete) and ensures high-precision recipe accuracy via downstream sensors for moisture content and consistency, thus ensuring economical and sustainable production. The latter is also achieved through extraction and filtering of cement dust, which is fed back into the mixing process in a controlled manner.

The earth-moist concrete types are produced by two 1.50 m³ and one 1.00 m³ counterflow planetary mixers. Short mixing times for the individual batches of 0.4 m³ to a maximum of 1.5 m³ ensure reliable supply of all production lines. Each mixer discharges into both bucket conveyors leading directly into the channel production via a 90° bend where the stationary lines respectively the available troughs movable by a forklift for the floor production of large channels are fed fully automatically.

As with all LINEMIX^® plants made by SBM a well-insulating housing ensures reliable year-round operation with low environment emissions (noise, dust) in the Birco factory in Baden-Baden. For the safe storage and transport of temperature-sensitive additives, Birco additionally invested in modern air-conditioning technology facilitating the efficient use of the waste heat of electrical plant components (motors, control cabinets) to heat the mixing plant.

Convincing in practice
Concrete production and bucket conveyor feeding are also fully automatically controlled and monitored by the central control system which - in addition to quickly switching between some 40 standard recipes - also allows producing special concrete types at very short notice. The individual production batches are retrieved directly at the production stations by the staff. Only one mixing technician per shift monitors the processes in the extensively video-controlled mixing plant from the control station, carries out quality checks, and schedules the necessary material provision and upcoming deliveries according to the production planning.

Plant manager Heribert Wunsch also expressively acknowledges the advantages of the new plant in terms of maintenance and servicing: Necessary work during the usual two-shift operation is facilitated by safely accessible and generously dimensioned working areas around the individual plant components as well as permanently installed hoisting equipment in and on the plant.