There are two main stages in a crushing plant, namely crushing and screening.
A. Crushing
The first step of processing begins after the extraction from quarry or pit. Many of these steps also are common to recycled materials, clay, and other manufactured aggregates. The first stage in most operations is the reduction and sizing by crushing. Some operations, however, provide a step prior to crushing called scalping.
1. Scalping
Scalping (Figure 1) most often is used to divert fines at a jaw primary crusher in order to improve crusher efficiency. In this way the very coarse portion is crushed and then recombined with the portion of crusher-run material before further processing. This first step may, however, be an excellent time to improve a deleterious problem. If a deleterious or fines problem exists in the finer fraction of crusher-run material (namely, clay, shale, finely weathered material, etc.) the fall-through of the scalping operation may be totally or partially diverted and wasted, or may be made into a product of lesser quality. In any case, only acceptable amounts, if any, should be returned back into the higher quality product. Consideration of process variables in this early stage may be very important.
2. Primary crushing
In stone quarries or in very “boney” gravel pits, large material usually is reduced in size by either a jaw (Figure 2) or a gyratory crusher. Both types are compression crushers. Although economical, they have the tendency to create thin, elongated particles. Particle shapes sometimes may be a problem for Producers of hot mix asphalt. In some operations impact crushers are used for primary crushing, but they may have a slightly higher cost per ton. Impact crushers may upgrade poor-quality aggregate and increase separation, such as removal of rebar from concrete in recycling operations.
After primary crushing/reduction the resulting aggregate generally is placed in a large “surge” pile where the aggregate may be fed into the secondary operation whenever convenient. Care is always taken when building up and loading out surge piles, as this step may be a major source of segregation of material going to the secondary plant. Variation at this point may affect both mineral quality and gradation.
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