Transforming ‘waste' marble

Marmetal, a producer of the world famous Rosa Portugal marble, recently began to recycle its mountains of 'waste‘ marble using the new generation Lokotrack mobile crushing and screening equipment from Metso Minerals.

The company produces 60000 to 70000 m³ per year, only a relatively small proportion of which is sold as products such as blocks, slabs and cladding.

However, according to managing director José Delgado, there are many uses for waste marble, including landscaping and road construction as well as uses in industry, agriculture and even cosmetics manufacturing

“Our objective is to create an environmentally friendly recycling process and make a profitable business out of it. We foresee a good market in the Extremadura region in Spain, where we will sell 30 to 40% of the recycled materials. In addition, the new high-speed train track between Madrid and Lisbon requires high quantities of the kinds of aggregates that we can produce from the waste marble,” he said.

The crushing and screening process for marble is built around the modern, mobile Lokotrack equipment – the new generation LT1415S impactor plant, equipped with a detachable screen module and an ST620 mobile screen. Mobile equipment was chosen for easy movement between the company's four quarries. The end products are 0 to 4 mm, 4 to 12 mm, 12 to 20 mm and 2 to 40 mm, and sometimes 0 to 31,5 mm for road base material.

During its first months in operation, the mobile process has achieved an average capacity of around 200 tonnes per hour. When fine-tuned, Mr Delgado believes that a 300 tonnes per hour capacity can be reached.