EXECUTIVE REPORT
An old track’s steel core emerges
from the high-pressure water jets that have removed the rubber coating.
On the right track
A new process enables old rubber tracks and their steel cores to be recycled efficiently and cost-effectively, as Nick Johnson discovered in Suffolk.
The market town of Beccles, in rural Suffolk, might seem an unlikely place for the solution to a problem that has been piling up in recent years for the UK plant hire industry. However, it is home to the developer of a new process that has been invented to efficiently deal with old rubber tracks from compact excavators, tracked dumpers, loaders and spider style access platforms and mini cranes.
To maximise their life whilst minimising surface damage, rubber tracks are made from a hardwearing rubber compound bonded very strongly onto a steel core with high tensile wires. However, once broken or worn out, these tracks become a problem waste stream.
Despite their metal content, scrap dealers do not want them because a typical mini excavator track has nearly 40% rubber ‘contamination’ by weight. The landfill disposal option is becoming very expensive and, increasingly, landfill operators do not want to take any rubber, with most tyres and all shredded tyres having been banned under the EU 2006 Landfill Directive. Fly tipping or burying old rubber tracks is a serious crime. If the Environment Agency or local authority finds out and prosecutes, offenders can expect swingeing fines and a lot of very negative publicity.
The new environmentally responsible and legal way of disposing of old rubber tracks has been developed by Aquablast Ltd, a specialist in ultra high pressure water jets. Its process has world patents pending and the project has been supported by WRAP, the Waste Resource Action Programme, which is part of DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).
onto the old rubber tracks as they are conveyed underneath. These jets reach a speed of almost Mach 3 (2,250mph, or three times the speed of sound) to cleanly separate the hard rubber from the steel cores and wires of the tracks.
After further treatment and drying, the retrieved rubber crumb, ranging in size from ‘granulate’ to ‘powder’ (<1000 microns), is attractive to rubber re-processing specialists. It can be conveniently recycled into a wide variety of products, ranging from grouts and adhesives to rubber modified asphalt.
The scrap trade readily accepts the clean steel retrieved from the tracks, although Recyclatrack’s MD Donald Blair is investigating alternative, higher value uses for the cores and wires. The company is busy ticking more ‘green boxes’ as it recycles 90% of the water used. And because the water is heated up to 50-55°C during the process, Donald Blair is currently looking at ways to recover this heat.
Aquablast was persuaded to adapt its ultra high-pressure water jet technology to deal with old rubber tracks by Nick Leach, from plant distributor Leach Lewis Plant Ltd. He has set up Leach Lewis Recycling to provide the official track collection and delivery service that is designed to enable UK hire companies to use the Recyclatrack facility.
The clean metal of the track core and the rubber powder from its coating are ready for recycling.
Leach Lewis supplies replacement rubber tracks and it can now also legally dispose of all old ones with a proper audit trail.
The prices charged depend on the quantity of tracks involved and whether they are delivered to a Leach Lewis depot, or collected from a hire company’s premises.
Aquablast has created a new subsidiary, called Recyclatrack Ltd, to run the process from its Environment Agency licensed site in Beccles. Rather than using harmful chemicals or potentially flammable operations, the Recyclatrack process simply uses low volumes of fresh water to efficiently separate the rubber from the steel in the old rubber tracks. Modified fluid intensifiers and arrays of rotary water jets, with nozzles specially made by Aquablast, are used to blast water at very high pressure of more than 50,000 psi down
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Nick Leach reports that A-Plant, GAP, GE Equipment Services, Hewden, Hirebase, L Lynch and Mr Plant Hire have already used the recycling service. This list should be set to grow dramatically as more hire companies decide that the new process will help them meet their corporate, social and environmental responsibilities.
• 0845 009 7444
www.leachlewis.com
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