Linnhoff Technologies of Singapore has won a contract to supply an asphalt batching plant to the International Grand Prix circuit now under construction at Abu Dhabi.

The plant, a Linnhoff LH3000, will be the sole unit supplying asphalt for the 5.8 km circuit, which is being built to a tight schedule to allow the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2009 to take place in November next year.
The race will take place on the International Grand Prix circuit that is being constructed on Yas Island by Aldar Properties, one of the UAE’s leading property development companies. It has been designed by renowned Formula One circuit designer Hermann Tilke (see separate article).
With 20 corners, the track will twist through the natural island, passing the marina and winding its way through sand dunes. The circuit has three planned grandstand areas.
The Linnhoff LH3000 is a tower batching plant with an integrated hot storage silo that can hold 150 tonnes of hotmix asphalt and which is placed below the twin shaft mixer in a heat-economising design.
The plant has been delivered to the joint Malaysian and Bahrain construction firm Cebarco-WCT Engineering, which is handling the asphalting part of the contract. Built in Singapore, the plant was shipped to Abu Dhabi and is now being commissioned. The plant will be producing up to 240 tonnes of asphalt per hour for the construction of the track surface.
Linnhoff Technologies in Singapore has been specialising in the design and fabrication of asphalt mixing plants since 1984, and is a division of Lintec of Germany.
Meanwhile, four Lintec concrete batching plant, including two new purpose-ordered and recently commissioned CC 3000 D are meeting Readymix Abu Dhabi’s (RMAD) demand for 4,200 cu m per day of high-specification concrete on Abu Dhabi’s prestigious Al Raha Beach development and the adjacent Yas Island development.
All four plant are able to meet the initial requirement of 4,200 cu m per day of high specification quality concrete, which will rise to 8,000 cu m. By completion, it is anticipated that the project will use in excess of 15 million cu m of concrete.
The Al Raha Beach development is being built close to the Abu Dhabi-Dubai highway along a 5 km long water frontage, much on reclaimed land. It will occupy an area of 6.8 million sq m and provide a total built-up area of 12 million sq m for residential, commercial and recreational uses.The development will provide a new city district serving as the gateway to Abu Dhabi City and accommodate some 120,000 residents in a series of high, medium, and-low rise residential towers.
The Lintec concrete plant are built to ISO-container specifications and certified by Germanischer Lloyd. The mixing plant is built into standard 20 ft and 40 ft containers, with each container equipped with all the necessary electrical and mechanical connectors.
“For on-site installation, a prepared and compacted surface with a minimum ground bearing pressure of 2.5 kg/sq cm is sufficient and additional concrete foundations are not necessary, says a spokesman for Lintec. “With low slump concrete and a 30-second mixing cycle, the CC 3000 D can handle a 240 cu m per hour load with one mixer at 120 cu m per hour in continuous operation, and twice that with both mixers in simultaneous action.”
It is also able to mix two different mixes at the same time.
According to Robert Hogan, production manager at the leading readymix supplier Readymix Abu Dhabi, the company was initially attracted to Lintec’s easy transportation capabilities with the design based on ISO-containers.
“We found that this suited our requirements with a series of projects in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar, but as an added bonus, we quickly recognised that the twin-shaft design mixer ensured a high output quality concrete.”
The two recently-commissioned Lintec units each feature nine cement silos, for Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS), microsilica, fly ash and SRC type V cement.
Hogan confirms that virtually every mix with all four Lintecs will include at least two chemical mixes – LD10, an admix plasticizer and retarder plus RH857 superplasticiser.
“In addition, when specified we will also add glenium – a very high range polycarboxylate superplasticizer for high strength mixes,” he adds.
The installation also includes ice plant to meet the extreme high ambient temperatures experienced throughout the Gulf region – with a 60 tonnes storage capacity, each unit can supply 12 cu m per hour of cold water or 3 tonmes of ice per hour,
“Even though it is early days in the Raha and Yas developments, we are already providing 85 N/sq mm strength concrete which can be difficult with certain mobile-type plant, yet it is not a problem with Lintec,” says Hogan.
Plant engineer Ali Kassem states that although based on a mobile concept, Lintec can be considered a heavy-duty plant and with regular maintenance is proving to be trouble-free.
Indeed one of the CC 3000 D mobile concrete batching plant at Raha has ‘clocked’ in more than 1 million cu m of high-quality concrete working on projects in Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi – with only a few wear plates in the mixer being changed to date, says the spokesman.
Readymix Abu Dhabi was able to take advantage of the ease of transportation concept moving the plant from Abu Dhabi to a project in Qatar.
“With a production cycle of just 13 days, ease of erection and dismantling was critical,” says Kassem. “The customer was extremely satisfied and the plant was dismantled and shipped back to Abu Dhabi.”
It was then transferred to the Palm Jumeirah project in Dubai. “On completion, the plant was dismantled within a week and on the move again back to Abu Dhabi and its current location on the Yas Island development,” says Kassem. “Even complying with the very stringent Abu Dhabi heath and safety regulations, the plant was up and running within the month.”