Al-Jazera Concrete Company

To support the development of Madinat Al Wurood – commonly known as the City of Roses – a new suburb located in the north of the Taif governorate in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Al-Jazera Concrete Company (JCC) partnered with CDE to commission a new sand wash plant to improve the efficiency of its operation, the compressive strength of its concrete, and to reduce its environmental footprint.

In the first phase of the project, over nine million square metres of land, including 112km of road networks and 5,400 residential villas will be developed. To date, JCC has supplied over 425,000m³ of poured concrete to the project to support the construction of over 1,500 prefabricated residential units.

To improve efficiency, concrete strength and minimise environmental impact, JCC sought a solution to efficiently process and enhance the sand equivalent (SE) value of the crusher fines used in its concrete mix, which CDE determined to be around 50%.

SE values indicate the proportion of dust and clay-like material in feed material. A lower value indicates a higher proportion of this material. The higher the SE value the stronger the concrete, which then requires less cement to bind, a costly process both commercially and environmentally.

Processing up to 300 tonnes per hour (tph) of material, the solution is producing 200tph of 0-5mm sand with a final SE value of 88%, up from around 50% prior to commissioning and significantly exceeding acceptance criteria of 70%.

Using CDE manufactured sand in JCC’s concrete mix design is helping to lower the production of CO₂ by optimising the concrete mix with less cement required to obtain the same compressive strength.

JCC’s Taif area manager, Mr Abdelmajeed Al Kurdi, said: “As well as driving down cement consumption and boosting the SE value of our material to produce a higher quality end product, the solution designed and engineered by CDE has also delivered significant efficiency gains in terms of water management on site.