Superintendent: Rich Halliday Jr.
Location: Wilkes-Barre, PA
Industry: Asphalt
Capacity: 4-ton batch plant
Employees: 15
Rich Halliday, Jr. knows his valve partner, Plattco Corporation, can deliver the problem-solving technical expertise and new product innovations to keep his maintenance costs low and uptime high.
The Wilkes-Barre Materials plant uses two Plattco S8-Series Double Flap Airlock® Valves with a Dutchman in between to move sandstone dust into the silo. The Plattco S8-1275 valves have been equipped with Plattco’s patented Mechanical Shaft Seal (MSS) and patent-pending EZ Seat replaceable wear edge, two new features that address operational challenges facing asphalt plants.
According to Halliday, before the MSS and EZ Seat product enhancements were available, his team needed to perform maintenance on the S8-Series valves every month or two to make sure the seals didn’t leak. “There was a lot of wear on the valves because the material is so abrasive,” Halliday said. “We were changing the seats and flapper three or four times a year and it was a fairly time consuming operation
Plattco engineers began designing two new features to help Wilkes-Barre Materials and other plants that need to convey abrasive materials like stone dust, sand, fly ash, cement, lime and gypsum at high speeds under high pressure.
For Wilkes-Barre Materials, the MSS has made a tremendous difference in the efficiency of operations. “We first installed the new shaft seals in the S8 valves in 2010 and since we’ve reduced our maintenance costs, reduced overtime labor and reduced our downtime,” Halliday said.
This time savings is possible because the new EZ Seat is a lightweight wear edge for the S8-Series and H-Series Plattco valves that makes it possible to avoid removing and replacing the entire wear component. On the S8-Series valve, the Wilkes-Barre Materials maintenance employee only has to change a six pound part that bolts onto the valve, instead of a part that weighs more than 30 pounds.
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