Saving River Beds by Using Manufactured Sand in Ready Mix Concrete.
Sand is a rudimentary material that is required for construction. It is the main source of silica and it is mostly used in making optics and glass. It also has an important role to play in producing plaster, clay and mortar. One of the most widely used materials that constitute sand is cement and it is used to build anything between houses to towering skyscrapers. The expanding infrastructure and the growth of urbanization have pressurized and increased the demand for natural sand which is now in decline and has become a point of concern for realtors for a longtime. This decline has been seen in developing countries like India where the source of natural sand, river beds, has been exploited and the mass mining of the sand has lowered the stream’s bottom and in turn led to bank erosion.
Every concrete and ready mix factories have used sand found in the river beds in the earlier days even when the first Ready mix factory was built 80 years back in India. The concrete industry did not begin to expand significantly until the 1960′s. The demand for river sand for making the concrete is increasing day by day and has reached a point where the rivers can no longer meet the rising demand of construction sector. It takes millions of years for natural sand to form and is not replenish able. Looking at the need for sand, few cement manufacturers have replaced natural sand with manufactured sand.
Many players in this industry are taking a stance in reducing the use of river sand; however in rural areas, many still use river sand despite government regulations and law enforcement. Due to the depletion of river sand in many areas, Aparna RMC has started using crushed rock fines (manufactured sand) in ready mix factories as fine aggregate.
The industry should understand the benefits of replacing natural sand with manufactured sand in the concrete mix. As a Ready Mix manufacturer, Aparna RMC (Ready Mix Concrete) has been producing RMC around 60,000 W per month from past 10 years. The company has been selling the product with different percentage of manufactured sand which replaces river sand. In the process,the cost of the product has gone down by using a lesser percentage of river sand.
Concrete is a composite material and consists of building material, coarse aggregate, fine aggregate and water. With the evolution of concrete technology, the admixtures (Plasticizers) are one of the ingredients of concrete and this enhances the properties of concrete.
In the conventional method, the mixes are made by volume batching. In that process the produced concrete are from grades M5 to M25. But in Ready mix plants one can produce higher grades of concrete with grades of M50 to M80 with 10 to 12% lesser cement content than the conventional methods. To produce high performance and high strength concrete mixes, Aparna RMC is using other types of cementitious materials like Flyash, GGB5, Micro silica and Admixtures.
Having established RMC Production in the year 2006, Aparna RMC has become the leading producer of ready mix concrete (RMC) in Southern India over the past decade. As an ISO 9001 certified company, our focus has always been on providing best quality products to our partners.