Vögele’s Passive Remixing Insert with an Active Remixing Module
BY AsphaltPro Staff
Hopper inserts can be helpful to increase the volume of asphalt material you can carry, but they can also assist in avoiding segregation of your asphalt mix. That’s the idea behind the passive remixing insert with an active remixing module from the team at Vögele, a division of Wirtgen America, Antioch, Tennessee. Here’s how it works.
With the use of a material transfer vehicle, asphalt mix is delivered to the hopper insert. It can be loaded between two baffles located within the insert, which limit gradation segregation. The maximum capacity of the insert, when filled only between the baffles, is 17 tons. However, operators can also overflow the baffles, as the company literature states, to make use of the full 23-ton hopper.
“Anytime you create a pile, you allow larger stones to roll on the sloping face until they stop, and they stop when they hit the wall of the insert,” said Laikram “Nars” Narsingh, manager, commercial support and development for Vögele. “The baffles allow material to funnel straight into the flight chain to prevent larger stones from rolling to the sides.”
Between the baffles, there is a grate system to break up cold crusts as they enter the insert. This combats not only gradation segregation, but also thermal segregation by allowing smaller clumps to absorb heat from the hotter surrounding mix.
The grate system is located more than a foot beneath the top of the baffles to allow operators to pile asphalt on top of the grate so that the increased weight forces the material through the parallel grate bars, which are spaced between 3 and 8 inches apart.
After passing through the grate, the mix travels down to the base of the hopper insert. Since the front of the insert is wider, material flows from the front of the insert to the back of the insert to minimize thermal segregation. This wider, overhanging front of the insert also expands its total capacity.
The material then passes through the trapezoid-shaped opening on the bottom of the insert, which also aims to reblend mix naturally as stones move along the sides of the insert, and is then discharged onto the conveyor of the asphalt paver.
For more information, contact Narsingh at (615) 501-0600.