Case Study Towens plant | Matec Industries

Plant Data

Answering the needs: Towens Waste Management Ltd

Towens Waste Management Ltd is a British company that began its operations in 1992, initially focusing on waste management in a suburb of Bristol. Over the years, it has evolved, acquiring greater expertise and expanding into areas such as heavy equipment rental for transportation or excavation. Today, Towens stands out as an excellence in waste management and gravel and sand recycling, recognized throughout the southwest of England. Towens’ client requirement was to enhance its range of services by providing local contractors with a quality fill product made from carefully washed and selected sand and gravel. After acquiring an old airfield just south of Weston, Towens aimed to create a central production hub for southern England capable of processing up to 85 tph of material and decontaminating it. This is where Matec came into play.

Attritec: attrition cells

For deep decontamination of sludge, Matec offers Attritec, an efficient attrition cell system designed to remove pollutants from the surface of sands in turbid waters. Cleaning occurs through the frictional action (attrition) between particles, generated by stirrers inside the machine. The intense collisions between solid particles, caused by constant movement in opposite flows of the blades or generated turbulence, promote the detachment of all pollutants adhered to the surface of sands without reducing the volume of valuable particles.

Matec’s solution for Towens plant

Creating a custom plant that would allow the client to achieve all desired results was no easy task, but we succeeded. After an intense phase of analysis and development, involving site visits and 3D simulations, we arrived at the ideal solution by proposing a complete plant for aggregates treatment, crushing, soil washing, and wastewater recycling.

The first part of the plant consists of a mobile scalper and an impact crusher, allowing excavators to unload all coarse material inside the plant, and select and crush rocks that would be too large for effective treatment by the washing plant. Next is our Aggretec system, which includes a washing and screening system with 3 granulometries and a sand washing system with 2 hydrocyclones. To eliminate silt and clay residues from the gravel, we integrated a log washer with rotating blades, our log washer, Scrubtec, with a trash screen, ensuring effective removal of impurities from the rocks to be selected.

Since the sludge is rich in micro-impurities, we added a deep cleaning system with attrition cells and a “desoil” system to remove dissolved hydrocarbons from the sludge. To complete the setup, our water treatment plant with a filter press includes a 180,000-liter stainless steel silo, a 3,000-liter automatic flocculation system, a 50,000-liter wastewater tank, and a 100,000-liter clean water tank. The Terrae 1500×1500 filter press with 190 plates and an automatic washing system “Robowash,” powered by an Alfa Pompe centrifugal pump of our production, completes the installation.

Result achieved in Towens plant

Matec achieved the desired result for the client, leveraging its extensive experience in soil washing and inert treatment.

This new plant, indeed, allows the customer to produce three different granulometries of gravel (0-10mm, 10-20mm, 20-30mm) and two types of sand (0-2mm, 2-4mm), transforming their investment into a lucrative new business. The commitment to fully satisfy our customer has enabled our team to integrate new technological solutions that have reached the state of the art in the field of recycling and reclamation.