Shredders and balers


Applying the right pressure to save space


Whether it’s plastic films that require shredding or packaging materials that need to be baled, UK-based shredder and baler specialists offer a plethora of options. Claire Col reports.


Claire Col Freelance writer


H


AZARDOUS PLASTICS and some plastic bags should be banned by 2020, said the European Parliament in a resolution last week. Further to a European Commission


green paper and as part of an EU strategy to reduce plastic waste, this call to action stresses that plastic waste is damaging the environment due to weak enforcement of EU legislation and the lack of specific EU laws on plastic wastes, despite their particularities. Moreover, MEPs stressed that the economic potential of recycling plastics is still largely unexploited: only 25% of plastic wastes are currently recycled and the full enforcement of EU legislation on waste is estimated to be capable of saving €72bn a year, boosting the annual turnover of EU waste management and recycling firms by €42bn, as well as creating more than 400,000 jobs by 2020, say MEPs.


Fercell Engineering SITA UK recently called on the expertise of Fercell Engineering, an engineering solution provider to the recycling sector, to supply a plastics materials feedstock system to an end of life plastics to fuel plant SITA UK is developing with Cynar Technology. Established in 1977, Fercell specialises in designing, manufacturing and installing waste resource processing solutions and are sole UK & Ireland distributor partners for IMRO conveying, sorting and separation and WEIMA shredding technology. “Sita needed a plant to divert domestic plastic films from incineration and landfill to liquid fuels next to its materials recycling facility in Avonmouth, near Bristol,” explains Bruce Le Gros, Fercell’s marketing and communications manager. “The build is of such a high quality they demand virtually zero maintenance,” he says before adding: “Fercell were the obvious choice to help them do this.”


Fercell installed a range of machinery from


the IMRO Heavy Line range which included bale loading conveyers, L-shaped conveyors,


4 January 23 2014


overbelt magnet separators, input feed shredders, permanent magnet drums and a vibration shoot/eddy current separator. “The process includes shredding, dry cleaning and electromechanically removing both ferrous and non-ferrous materials to meet a tight standard,” explains Le Gros. Two conveying methods are employed, belt and pneumatic ducted for the conveying of various materials and two Fercell DustStorm filter units manage dust via secondary cyclonic separation equipment. “The compactly designed and manufactured solution installed by Fercell prepares material from a baled product into a homogenous fraction sized plastic flake of which is conveyed to a metering bunker as feedstock to the Cynar process,” continues Fercell’s marketing and communications manager. Fercell IMRO UK conveyors fall into three standard ranges, however, numerous optional variances are said to be available to create the optimum tailor-made solution. Le Gros again: “Moreover, systems are designed, manufactured, built and pre- commissioned prior to site delivery enabling rapid site installation.”


HSM The efficient use of resources and energy helps to minimise environmental impact along the entire supply chain, and waste from packaging is an important issue, but thanks to HSM, specialists in baling and disposal technologies, mail-order company Engelbert Strauss are able to recycle 90% of all their packaging materials. Based in Germany, Engelbert Strauss is a European mail-order company for work clothes and occupational protection. However, most textiles arrive on premises in cardboard boxes. “We store between 2,000 and 4,000 boxes every day,” says Steffen Strauß, partner at Engelbert Strauss, and huge amounts of empty boxes are said to remain after the clothes have been dispatched. To dispose of these efficiently, Engelbert


Strauss looked to HSM, who provide multistage shredder systems, channel baling presses and PET solutions globally, for their fully automatic VK4012 channel baling presses.


Engelbert Strauss say the benefits far outweigh the two compactors they had used previously. “The channel baling press applies the pressure of 450 kilonewton (kN), converting up to 800 boxes in an hour, into six to eight bales with a weight of around 300 kilograms,” explains John Hunter, HSM’s sales manager. Moreover, the channel baling press is fed automatically with cardboard so staff throw the empty boxes on to a conveyor belt which transports the cardboard to the baling press. From here they fall into the hopper where the loose boxes are initially compressed. “A sensor indicates that the hopper is filled


properly, then the actual pressing process can begin,” adds Hunter. “Once the press has strapped three bales and pushed them onto the special three-metre bale slide, the forklift moves forward and stacks the bales in the disposal store.” An articulated lorry comes to Engelbert


Strauss once a week to load up 72 bales for transporting to paper factories. “The corrugated cardboard bales are a very desirable raw material and economic viability is also key,” says HSM’s sales manager. Strauß estimates the return on investment for the HSM channel baling press to be around two and a half years. HSM machines are supported in the UK by Staffordshire-based HSM UK.


The corrugated cardboard


bales are a very desirable raw material


Presona


Never one to miss a trick, UK-based Presona AB has more than 10 years´ experience of baling RDF and SRF. A specialist in designing and manufacturing balers, Presona launched


www.recyclingwasteworld.co.uk


their first baler with a tying system using combustible tying material in 2001, and since then have supplied balers for RDF baling, both to waste to energy installations and to the cement industry as well as at supermarket distribution centres. “The Presona balers are very well suited for


baling RDF, SRF and MSW thanks to our pre- press system developed by us in the 1960s, no shearing of the material is required. “In principle all the press force is utilised for the compaction process itself which means no power is wasted in the shearing operation,” explains a company spokesperson. “The ongoing development of the LP Series has focused on energy efficiency, reliability and user friendliness. When designing our balers we are increasingly taking a lifecycle approach and are continuously striving to be the most eco-friendly supplier,” he adds. According to the company, the Presona original pre-press technology balers stand to reason when choosing baling equipment for WTE plants, since they save energy in the baling operation using of up to 60% of the energy input required for a traditional shear baling system. “We offer a proven strapping technology


using PP (polypropylene) strings to eliminate ‘contamination’ of the baled material through steel wire,” explains the company representative before adding: “To remove the wire before incineration will cost both money and efforts. The plastic string breaking properties are comparable to the steel wire but the consumption cost for PP string is also significantly lower, offering savings of up to 70% over steel wire. “Moreover, the square bale format produced


by the Presona balers for best possible handling characteristics are dense and can be stacked in many layers with maintained bale shape.” Presona balers can reportedly be used for most varieties of recyclables, from paper and plastic to household and industrial waste. The product range also includes pneumatic waste extraction systems for the graphics industry, paper and packaging manufacturers as well as sorting plants for municipal waste. The baling specialist has recently also sold seven machines to Russia for baling recyclables during the Winter Olympics.


&WASTE WORLD


RWW Recycling


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12