Infrastructure company Fulton Hogan has unveiled fully electric mobile asphalt crusher, believed to be the first in Australasia.
The Belgian-designed Keestrack R3e, supplied by Equip2, is now being used in the company’s Mt Wellington, Auckland, asphalt recycling plant.
The asphalt recycling plant is itself a major environmental initiative, with recycled asphalt now constituting up to 40% of the mix in Fulton Hogan’s asphalt.
The new electric mobile asphalt crusher was commissioned shortly after Fulton Hogan introduced another large-scale piece of electrically powered (augmented) equipment, the world’s first Volvo EC480EL 50-tonne hybrid excavator.
Equip2 general manager Bert Hart said calculations by manufacturer Keestrack suggest the electric crusher will save 78.75 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year compared with its low fuel burn Keestrack R3ha diesel machine, based on it running 1000 hours per year. The CO2 emission savings would be more than 100 tonnes per year compared with less efficient diesel-powered crushers.
Equip2 specialises in equipping quarries, recyclers and materials businesses with machinery to sort, crush and shred materials like rocks, concrete waste and biomass. Hart said the company has been playing its part to decarbonise the industry by providing hybrid diesel electric mobile material processing machinery for many years.
“We recognise the future is electric and we are transitioning our product range in line with rapidly growing customer demand,” said Hart.
“The machine we have supplied to Fulton Hogan crushes old asphalt into little pieces so it can be reused for future roading projects.”
Fulton Hogan department manager Wayne Richardson said Fulton Hogan had converted its Mt Wellington asphalt recycling plant’s crusher from diesel to electric earlier this year and purchasing the fully electric Keestrack R3e mobile crusher was the next logical step.
“We learned a lot from converting the current mobile plant to electric. Now to have a brand new mobile crusher from a world leader in sustainable crushing equipment is the icing on the cake.” He said the equipment Equip2 supplies is critical for the construction and maintenance of the country’s roading network.
