A poker player down on his luck can always ask for a new deck. Shuffling that new deck can help break a string of bad luck and give the player a winning hand. The recycling industry has been dealt a bad hand since the financial meltdown of 2008. It has been hurt more than most industries by the economic down turn of the past few years. Demand has slackened and the market prices of recycled materials have crashed. Stockpiles of metals, cardboard, plastic bottles, and aluminum cans have gone wanting. However, with the economic recovery comes new hope and new demand for recycled materials. Companies that have survived the bad economy have done so by being smarter, quicker and leaner than their competitors are. Now that they have a new deck, they are poised to take advantage of the coming economic upturn.
Shuffling and dealing the deck is also an apt metaphor for what material recovery faculty (MRF) separators do. Waste comes into a “dirty” MRF as a single mixed wastestream, either municipal solid waste from homes and businesses or construction demolition debris from work sites. There, the waste is processed and separated by high-volume heavy machinery supported by extensive labor that operates the machines or performs secondary manual separation. In contrast, a “clean” MRF is a facility that receives already separated wastestreams for packaging and shipping while using little or no machinery and minimal labor. Like cards dealt from a shuffled deck, the mixed waste is dealt out by the various types of waste for resale and reuse (paper, corrugated cardboard, newsprint, ferrous and nonferrous metals, plastic, glass, etc.).
The “dealers” at a dirty MRF are the various types of machines used to extract specific types of waste from the general wastestream:
- Magnetic separators– The simplest of the MRF separators, this equipment extracts ferrous metals (iron and steel) from the wastestream with electromagnets. Typically, the magnets can be set overhead, pulling out ferrous objects from the wastestream passing underneath on a conveyor belt, or as part of the belt itself. In this second configuration the ferrous waste sticks to the belt as the rest of the wastestream falls off into a waiting bin as the belts turns under at a roller. Except for automobiles and car parts, the main sources of ferrous waste are containers, cans, appliances, and construction debris (steel rebar extracted from reinforced concrete, e.g.).
- Eddy-current separators– Less simple, but no less profitable, is the extraction of non-ferrous metals (mostly aluminum cans and foil) from the wastestream. Utilizing rapidly spinning magnetic rotors, an eddy current separator induces an electrical current into all types of metals. The current in turn generate its own repelling electromagnetic field. Instead of attracting, this equipment repels, causing the nonferrous metals to jump off the conveyor belt and into an adjacent collection bin.
- Disc screens– Once metals are removed, mechanical means can be used to extract other types of remaining waste. These separation techniques are based on the weight and size of the waste objects. Disc screens are used to extract large but lightweight object (like cardboard boxes). Entering the screener by way of an inflow bin that regulates its feed rate, the waste travels along a floor whose bed is lined with multiple discs of various sizes and configurations (circular, oval, star-shaped, etc.) arranged in intermeshing rows. The rotating disks create a wave action in the waste that carries large, light objects to the top for easy removal as the smaller, heavier objects pass through to the next removal stage.
- Rotating trommels– Modified from equipment originally intended to separate ore from slag for mining operations, trommels are perforated drums that slowly rotate at a shallow angle to the horizontal. This angled setting of its rotating axis allows the force of gravity to continuously feed waste into the trammel, allowing it to pass through and eventually discharging the remaining waste at the low end. The drum’s wall is perforated with holes large enough to allow small objects, fines, grit, shards, and organics to exit the wastestream. The interior of a trommel also comes equipped with parallel spiraling vanes that further retain large recyclables.
- Air classifiers– Looking like a chimney, an air classifier uses a large blower to suck air out of the top of the stack by inducing a high-velocity air stream. Waste enters at approximately the midpoint of the stack, where lightweight materials such as office paper and newsprint can be easily extracted by the blower, and heavier objects fall to the bottom. The extracted light materials are collected in a cyclone separator that further sorts the extracted material by size and weight.
- Air knives– Using the same principles as an air clarifier, the more precise air knife uses multiple layers (or sheets) of high-velocity airflows working in parallel to sort incoming materials. This parallel configuration prevents swirling and mixing of the extracted materials. Using only minor differences in airflow velocities between the various “sheets”, the air knife can separate material in a more refined operation that allows distinctions between various grades of paper that differ only slightly in mass and density.
- Glass-color separators– Light spectro-photometry (LSP) can distinguish between various colors of glass (clear, amber, brown, or green) and ceramics. The wavelengths of the different colors trigger a near-infrared (NIR) sensor and tell it what color the glass is. This in turn triggers an air blower that shoots a stream of air at the glass, pushing it into the appropriate sorting bin.
- Bulk handling systems– This is a generic term that applies primarily to machinery that processes, sorts, separates, and extracts different varieties of large debris, mostly from construction-and-demolition projects. These include asphalt pavement crushers, concrete shears that break reinforced concrete and allow the extraction of the steel rebar within, and screeners for sorting various types of crushed concrete sizes.
MRF Sorting and Material Handling Systems Suppliers
The Steel Unlimited, Inc. (SUI) family of companies includes the World’s Best Wear Parts Co. Recycling, especially bulk recycling, is not an easy or gentle process. Recycling and sorting machines take a lot of abuse. The wear and tear on moving parts is extreme and requires equally tough machinery. World’s Best is a leading manufacturer of these often forgotten but absolutely necessary machine parts. World’s Best Wear Parts makes replacement tips for the most widely used machinery available on the market today. Diamond Z, Haybuster, Hogzilla, Maxigring and Morbark all use World’s Best’s grinder parts and tips. It is the industry’s leading manufacturer of recycling grinder parts. Its AR400 and tungsten-carbide embedded products (grinder tips, hammers, tips, swing hammers, etc.) are the parts that keep recycling and grinding machinery operating. World’s Best Wear Parts is an industry leader in recycling and sorting screens. Built for the utmost strength and durability, they are made with three-quarter-inch or 1-inch AR400 Material. The company supplies screens for any and all available machines on the market today, including custom-fabricate screens that meet unique specifications. Its swing hammers and fixed hammers are also made with T-1 material and embedded with the World’s Best’s tungsten-carbide mix.
Worldwide Recycling Equipment Sales LLC is a major equipment manufacturer and dealer of recycling and environmental equipment with worldwide sales and distribution. With a customer base in 63 different countries, it is a world leader in its industry, specializing in auto and tire recycling equipment, soil remediation equipment, thermal desorption systems, construction-and-demolition debris recycling equipment, waste and refuse equipment, and material-handling equipment. Worldwide also manufactures a complete line of new sorting stations, trommel screens, heavy-duty conveyors, and crossbelt magnets under the name Tuffman that can be custom built to any specifications and come with a one-year warranty.
The Tuffman line offers sorting stations in a variety of sizes, including 6-man, 8-man, and 12-man models, as well as two mini models in 3-man and 4-man configurations. The larger models are designed for sorting and recycling construction and demolition debris as well as municipal solid waste. The smaller models are better suited for sorting plastics, papers, and other light recyclables. All sorting stations are constructed of heavy-duty carbon steel and come equipped with an infeed conveyor. The sorting stations are available in both stationary and portable models and can be custom built to meet the needs of any job site or intended application. Stationary models come equipped with emergency shutoffs, stairs, walkways, and sorting chutes. Stationary sorting station productivity options include crossbelt magnets and prescreening attachments. Portable sorting stations come with individual ladders for each station and offer productivity options such as breakaway catwalks, skid mounting for added stability, and hydraulic drive power. All portable sorting stations come mounted on a single-axel trailer, increasing efficiency and productivity by shortening the distance from the waste to the processing facility.
Van Dyk Recycling Solutions is the exclusive distributor of Bollegraaf, Lubo, and TiTech Recycling Equipment. Bollegraaf balers lead the industry in speed and productivity. The Bollegraaf Baler’s Single Ram design utilizes less power than a traditional two-ram baler and operates automatically without a dedicated operator. These balers can be instantly reset to switch between fiber, plastic containers, steel containers, or aluminum containers.
One of the company’s major projects was the Grand Central Recycling and Transfer station near La Puente, CA. Grand Central built and designed the system to increase waste diversion as a direct response to the anticipated closing of the Puente Hills Landfill in the fall of 2013. Van Dyk Recycling Solutions used innovative technology to allow the same line to switch between different wastestreams. “This innovative plant can process and sort residential, single-stream, dirty, and dry commercial waste and multifamily MSW all over a single processing line. As described by Wilfred Poiesz, western vice president of Van Dyk Recycling Solutions: “It is a scalable alternative for the recyclers who do not have the capital, volume, or needs for a multiple-line megaMRF.” The facility incorporates a flexible multimaterial system with a blend of conventional low-maintenance technology and highly automated processing system capable of processing 600-700 tons per day of any type of incoming material all on the same processing line. “The fact that VAN DYK Recycling Solutions could think out of the box allowed them to formulate the most competitively priced proposal as well as the best use of space and people,” stated Pete Perez, general manager of Grand Central Recycling.
Hustler Conveyors, is a manufacturer and supplier of the conveyor belts that tie the various stations and components of a MRF into an integrated whole. Its single-stream systems are totally integrated and ready for smooth operation upon installation. In addition to the equipment itself, Hustler provides initial design, engineering, fabrication, delivery, and installation. Depending on site-specific needs, the company can offer turnkey single-stream systems or such individual components as drum feeders, OCC separators, screens, and eddy currents.
Sebright Products Inc. has manufactured industrial trash/refuse equipment for almost 30 years while offering a full line of commercial and industrial refuse compaction equipment, as well as hydraulic cart dumpers, steel carts, hoppers, and accessories to make a complete refuse material handling solution. The company’s product line also includes specialty and custom compaction equipment designed for specific applications and needs. Its engineers can design or modify existing models to meet most application requirements.
The latest innovations to come from Bright Technologies, the specialty equipment division of Sebright Products Inc., are the Oil & Filter Recycler for high-volume oil filter recyclers, and the X3Cycler for the beverage industry, which offers a finished bale of PET or aluminum with the liquid removed from the containers. The company manufactures stationary compactors, self-contained compactors, and transfer station compactors. Its stationary compactors include 50 different models up to the largest, the Sebright model 9860-2-6. This is a twin-cylinder compactor designed to take the abuses of industrial waste and non-stop commercial use with large items. Self-contained compactors are designed to reduce waste that is wet and are a combination of a compactor and a container in a single leak-proof unit with a built-in sump for the retention of liquids. Each self-contained compactor comes with its own energy-efficient 10-horsepower power unit. An optional drain system can also be installed in the sump to separate the liquid for sanitary sewer disposal or even reuse in some cases. The transfer station compactors are installed in push pits and can apply forces ranging from 102,000 pounds to 165,000 pounds.
MiniMRF Recycling and Waste Diversion Technology is a joint venture between the Novelis Corp. and PRFection Engineering. Together, they have built and operated innovative material recovery systems that are designed to achieve high rates of solid waste diversion. These systems are intended to recover materials that have already eluded traditional recycling programs, materials that would otherwise end up in landfills. Deployed at landfills and transfer stations, the system extracts large quantities of valuable aluminum cans, steel, and a variety of other reusable materials. Future systems in the planning stage have the potential to remove up to 90% of the wastestream for recycling. Committed to environmental sustainability as well as improving the customer’s bottom line, Novelis and PRFection Engineering have designed their MiniMRF to increase recycling rates, provide sustainable recovery of aluminum and steel that would otherwise be missed in traditional recycling programs, and recover fines for use as alternative daily cover (ADC) in landfill applications. Their cost-effective design does not require new infrastructure in order to operate.
What is a MiniMRF? The MiniMRF is a trailer-mounted mobile unit whose modular design allows for easy relocation at MSW transfer stations, solid waste incinerators, or landfills. Its modular design allows it to be easily “plugged in” to existing recycling programs. The MiniMRF’s machinery is designed to remove metal scrap (especially aluminum beverage cans, steel cans, and other reusable materials) from wastestreams and landfills. Its efficient operation requires a certain minimum waste volume flow-through rate. Its footprint is a nominal 7,000 square feet of space. Waste needs to be moved to and recyclables removed from the MiniMRF during operation. So equipment such as front end loaders and hauling trucks will need to be provide by the host facility. The modular design also allows for the easy add-on of additional MiniMRFs such as the Engineered Fuel Module (for the recovery of combustible ultralight material including mixed paper and film plastic), the Fiber Module (which recovers cardboard and newspaper), and the Plastic Module (which recovers single-serve plastic beverage containers). The operational flexibility allows for specific applications targeted for individual wastestreams.
Bunting Magnetics Co. specializes in an extensive line of magnetic separation equipment for the removal of ferrous contaminants and objects from dry particulates, liquids, slurries, and municipal solid wastestreams. Theirs is a full product line with everything from basic cartridges, grates, and plate magnets to magnet housings, self-cleaning separators, pulleys, and drums. The company’s magnetic separators can work either individually or in tandem with other MRF separation systems to remove ferrous metal and debris from the facility’s conveying systems. In chemical applications, Bunting’s magnetic systems ensure purity of product. In solid waste recycling, they ensure the cost-effective removal of valuable scrap metal. The magnetic systems come in a wide range of models to handle virtually any application with exceptionally thorough metal removal. These systems can be customized to meet specific construction standards and to satisfy special requirements.
Steinert US, Inc. is a leader in the manufacture of eddy-current separators and other specialized MRF sorting equipment. These eddy currents are produced with eccentric and adjustable magnetic rotors, allowing for more effective separation of nonferrous material and efficient recovery of particles down to one-eighth of an inch in size. Because of the magnetic pole system mounted eccentrically in the head drum of the Steinert nonferrous separators, the effect of the changing magnetic fields is concentrated exactly on an area within which the material is most effectively subject to the forces. The pole system can be adjusted so that this position can be changed in order to have the maximum effect on the discharge parabola, and so to further amplify the effect of the forces. The eccentric pole system ensures that the influence of the magnetic field is only at a maximum at the moment of separation, and that no magnetic field is generated at other positions on the belt drum. Residual ferrous metals cannot adhere to the head drum, which means that wear on the belt and the self-cleaning drum shell are reduced to an absolute minimum. In other concentric pole systems, the effect of the magnetic field is frequently felt too early, with the consequence that the nonferrous metals are prematurely ejected from the magnetic field, thus resulting in their not being adequately deflected.
All in all, their eccentric system provides much greater operational efficiencies and higher rates of recovery. For example, the waste-to-energy ash recovery of the three-eighths-inch fraction size that formerly was sent to landfill can be recovered with this system. MRF material may be processed over a “portable” ECS that can be loaded on a trailer for use as a “Mobile Recovery Facility.” This would be useful in remote areas that do not have access to traditional fixed-site MRFs, and where transportation distances are just not economical.
Steinert also manufactures optical separators. Its near NIR models are able to sense and eject plastics down to half an inch with new camera-based sensing technology. This approach is not sensitive to heat, light, or vibration issues that were typical of earlier generations of sensors. Steinert’s newer generations of sensor combinations in the same structure allow for recovery of ferrous and nonferrous, as well as sensing by 3D shape, color, and metals, or through X-ray detection, similar to the airport baggage processes. With an NIR or color sensor available, the UniSort Flake sorter’s design is based on achieving efficiencies previously unheard of for sorting plastics, metals, and other materials down to very fine fractions. It has been specially developed for sorting ï¬ne-grain materials. This is difficult to achieve, since the process requires both high purity and high throughput. The material to be sorted is evenly accelerated to a speed of more than 10 feet per second by a conveyor belt. The material then passes the recognition plane and is recognized independently of its material properties (using NIR or color sensors). It can then be precisely separated by the high-speed valve strip.
Some companies design and provide whole recycling systems, not just individual pieces of equipment. The CP Group is a leader in this segment of the municipal solid waste recycling industry, providing some of the most advanced systems and equipment in the field. Its design team works directly with clients to customize their MSW processing systems for particular needs. Each wastestream is different, so they seek the optimal solution to recover valuable commodities. The goal of CP’s technology is to divert waste from entering landfills. The various MSW recycling systems are used in combination to recover valuable commodities, divert waste from landfills, and as a front-end separation system combined with energy conversions to create refuse-derived fuel (RDF). CP’s equipment is designed for durability and ruggedness, field-proven to provide maximized uptime and throughput, along with the maximum amount of marketable end products. The company’s equipment line includes disc screens, trommel screens, conveyor systems, bag openers, eddy-current separators, magnetic separators, optical sorters, bales, and intelligent motor-control systems.
CP’s line of disc screens includes its standard CPScreen, NEWScreen (for extracting newspaper), OCCScreen (for separating cardboard), glass-breaker screen, and finishing screen. Their screens automatically separate newspaper, containers, and mixed paper by means of patented disc-screen technology. Disc patterns can be configured to separate rigid containers from mixed paper easily and efficiently. Or, with a more open configuration, the operator can separate newspaper from mixed paper automatically. Combining CP’s patented molded rubber finger discs, variable-speed drives, and hydraulically adjustable deck angle, CP’s screens can be configured to ensure that material is sized properly for the most efficient sort possible. The company’s trommel screens are usually positioned at the start of the recycling process, replacing multiple equipment. Using a revolving-screen cylinder to accomplish the separation of material by size, the trommel screens can handle construction-and-demolition debris, municipal solid waste, organic greenwaste, and waste-to-energy front-end separation systems. Aluminum cans are extracted efficiently by CP’s eddy current separator, which ejects the cans with the same force as a magnet pulling steel. As other materials drop off the end of the conveyor, nonferrous aluminum cans are propelled over a splitter for separation.
Bulk Handling Systems Inc. has developed the first recovery system in the industry to keep 70% of waste out of the landfill, capturing 90%-99% of high-value commodities like PET plastics with only one pass. The system includes multiple sages: bag-breaker, drum separator, debris roll screen, polishing screens, and infrared and optical sorters. The patented bag-breaker technology eliminates the need for manual bag openers by using large, counter-rotating drums to effectively open bags and release content without damaging the high-value commodities inside. The company’s Nihot Drum Separator uses controlled air from a recirculation fan to separate materials by density and shape. The unique shape of the disc screener and in-line configuration of the hardened-steel discs create precise openings for accur