While this may sound elementary to some producers, others may be surprised to learn that you can capture the smoke and/or dust particles emitted around the transfer conveyor atop the silo and feed those elements back into your process. Producers successfully pull smoke from “problem areas” and filter it across or through different media—depending on the manufacturer—to clean the air stream before directing the air one way and the coalesced asphalt cement droplets and fine particulate other ways.
You may have seen pictures of aprons or curtains around loadout areas in combination with walls around the scale, and ductwork atop the silos. Enclosing the loadout area is one way to trap smoke or fume—especially if you still predominantly run hot-mix asphalt (HMA) instead of warm-mix asphalt (WMA).
While no one wants to enclose an asphalt plant and trap heat around workers, enclosing specific “potential emissions points” with structures that can collect and direct particulates toward filtering media is another way to minimize what contributes to your stack emissions numbers. By collecting and reusing particulates—and even microscopic liquid droplets of asphalt gold—you protect the environment, clean your operation, and lower your stack emissions numbers.
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