Sponsored by COMPRESSORS
as a matter of course the motor, valve plates, bearings, gaskets, and pressure relief valves. This accounts for around 25 per cent of the compressor by weight.
For example, on a Bitzer 4G-30.2 unit, the components removed and replaced with new weigh around 55kg out of a total assembled compressor weight of 206kg. Therefore, if treated as waste, around one quarter of the weight of a remanufactured compressor would be discarded.
In the case of a badly damaged compressor, requiring replacement of housings, piston/ con rods, crankshaft and screws, this could be significantly higher.
The old parts are made of valuable materials, including copper, aluminium, steel and cast iron. They also contain oil residues, grease and paint contamination. Under Green Point’s sustainability protocol, this material is regularly collected and processed by a specialist contractor.
The company employed by Green Point maintains a quality and environmental management system certified to BS EN ISO 9001:2008 / BS EN ISO 14001:2004. This requires a total environmental management and protection approach, covering collection, segregation, processing and distribution of metals, from receipt to final recycling at the foundry.
Under the system, all the direct and indirect effects the recovery and recycling process has, or could potentially have, on the environment are controlled and minimised. Used lubricants recovered during
remanufacturing are collected in drums, and the material recovered from Green Point for analysis and processing by a specialist oil reclamation company.
Depending on the degree of contamination, it is either treated and cleaned for re-use as base oil in other applications, or used as fuel. When used as a fuel, the cleaned fluid is transported by tanker to power stations and to generate electricity.
All cardboard and paper-based material used in packaging is also retained and collected for recycling. The approach even extends to waste wood from plinths and packing frames used in protecting compressors during shipping. The greening of the refrigeration and air conditioning industry continues to be one of the most significant drivers shaping the sector. Changes on the refrigerants front have of course been the headline news, but the sharpened environmental awareness and the need for sustainability has permeated all aspects of the industry’s operations.
One of the drivers for this is the changing attitudes of end users, in direct response to
Copper windings are removed and separated.
Metal sorting is key to the recycling operation.
environmental legislation but also as part of the greening of their own CSR policies. It is no longer considered acceptable for some major end users, for example retailers and blue chip companies, to simply comply with the letter of the law; many want to lead – indeed be seen to pioneer – on sustainability. As a result, we are seeing far-sighted new approaches that
are translating into green procurement policies. This can only be good news for the industry in general, and the compressor remanufacturing sector in particular. As the issues of energy efficiency and careful stewardship of resources come to the fore, Green Point is well-positioned in the vanguard of this important trend for the future.
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