The Guandi hydropower station, located in Sichuan Province, China, is designed to have an installed gross capacity of 2.4 million kilowatts. The project owner is Sinohydro Bureau 8 Co Ltd, which was previously involved in the construction of the Three Gorges hydropower station.
?This project is not as big as Three Gorges, but our aggregates system is equipped with eight Barmac B9100SE VSI crusher units. The system has the largest number of crushers of the same brand and model for aggregates producing in the world,? says Mr Shi Guangmin, manager of the aggregates division of Sinohydro Bureau 8 Co Ltd.
When asked why they needed a large lot of equipment for a project smaller than Three Gorges, Mr Shi explained: ?The rock we deal with is basalt, which is the hardest of all rocks, with a hardness up to 325M. Additionally, the Guandi Hydropower Station?s dam, with 4.02 million cubic metres in volume, is built with roller-compacted concrete. To complete the dam on time, a powerful and continuous supply of aggregate is an important guarantee for a strong and stable supply of concrete. So, we needed qualified crushing equipment with excellent performance. We chose Metso to provide all eight crushers for tertiary crushing.?
He added that in such an important project, there were excessive demands for the supply and quality of the aggregates, and the key crushing equipment played the most important role in meeting this demand.
?Some years ago,? Mr Shi recalled, ?Metso provided five Barmac crushers for our Three Gorges project and I witnessed the extraordinary performance of their equipment. We believe that Metso?s Barmac is our best choice for dealing with such hard rock and it guarantees us a final product that we will be satisfied with, both in quality and quantity.
?Our top priority is to secure a sustained production of aggregates, so we think highly of the performance, reliability and stability of the crushing equipment which we depend on to accomplish our task. Metso crushers make us confident.? Mr Shi said that the designed capacity of the Zuziba aggregate production system at Guandi was 550,000 tonnes per month. ?During the peak production period, our output is around 700,000 tonnes per month and sometimes it even reaches 750,000 tonnes per month. The strong supply of aggregate secures us a powerful capacity of roller-compacted concrete production.?
Mr Shi proudly points out that within seven months of the initial concreting of the dam, the project was more than half-finished. ?We are really proud of the speed of the project. The overloaded operation is a tough test of the performance of the crushers. I believe that Metso?s Barmac crusher is our best and only choice.?
Source: Metso