McAsphalt Stays Liquid With Heatec

McAsphalt Industries, Ltd., headquartered in Scarborough, Ontario, is a major distributor of asphalt products. Their products are used extensively for road construction. They have approximately 22 terminals throughout Canada and deliver their products by truck, rail and barge. McAsphalt has their own barge and operates the tugboat that pushes the barge. The barge holds 7,000 metric tons of liquid asphalt. It travels to refineries in Detroit, Quebec City, and Montreal to pickup liquid asphalt, and it delivers asphalt to five of their terminals reached by water, traveling on Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The company relies on Heatec heaters aboard their barge, as well as at many of their asphalt terminals. All of these heaters feature a helical coil, and they heat thermal fluid circulating though serpentine coils immersed in the asphalt to keep it in a liquid state. The heater on the barge has an output of ten million Btu per hour and maintains the asphalt at about 300 degrees. Heaters at their terminals have outputs ranging up to 10 million Btu per hour and maintain the asphalt at temperatures of 160 320 degrees and above.