Three passes and the moisture’s gone
A brick producer installs a new three-pass rotary dryer to reduce maintenance and energy costs.
Boral Bricks Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, is a US subsidiary of Boral Ltd., Sydney, Australia. The company operates 24 plants throughout the southeastern US and is the largest brick producer in the US. At its plant in Salisbury, N.C., the company makes bricks for the residential housing and commercial building markets, shipping them primarily to customers in the Southeast.
The Salisbury plant uses a three-pass rotary dryer to dry sawdust that’s used as fuel to fire its brick kiln. For years, the company experienced problems with the rotary dryer and spent more money than the dryer originally cost
just to maintain it. When the dryer started to deteriorate beyond repair, the company finally decided to purchase
a new dryer constructed of thicker-gauge metal that would better resist the corrosion and wear caused by drying the sawdust..