Material Recovery Facility (Sorting Plant)

1. Material Recovery Facility (Sorting Plant)

2. Stuttgart has 10 Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) 3 sorting plants for packaging, commercial and demolition waste 1 sorting plant for light weight fraction (packaging) 2 sorting plants for dismantling of WEEE 1 sorting plants for construction and demolition waste 3 sorting plants for paper

3. There is no standard MRF process • Processing depends on: • Kind of material to be sorted • Separate collection • - how the material was collected (kerbside, • bring system) • Commingled collection • Target for sorting (Recycling, RDF)

4. Material recovery facility

5. Two main separation principles: Screening/ Separation according to sizes Classifying: (screening, air classification) Sorting: Separation, using the physical character of the material (magnetic separation, ballistic, eddy current, etc.)

6. Flow sheet of a MRF for Light Weight Fraction

7. Cutting shredder Drum screen Air classifier Large Rejects Plastic films Magnetic separator Fe-Metals Post-Sorting Aluminium Eddy current separator Drum screen Tetra Paks etc. Paper/board Air classifier Mixed plastic Roll bank NIR PE - bottles Rejects

8. Input: Packaging waste Reception area Cutting shredder opens the waste bags

9. Screening Drum screens use a combination of rotation and screening

10. Bucket screen Fine fraction • operates like a large drum screen • advantage: absolutely jam-free • in severe operating conditions Coarse fraction

11. Inclined sorting machines The Inclined Sorting Machine separates flat products from body-shaped products, inert material from non-combustible material.

12. Ballistic separator Separates light and heavy fractions depending on its physical differences (specific weight) Consists of a movable and perforated slope which is distributed into several vibrating segments

13. Air classifier Isolates light plastic and paper from the packaging stream – facilitates further separation Blower sucks air up through the throat, carrying light materials (paper, plastic) which then enter a cyclone separator where they loose velocity and drop out of the air stream

14. Magnetic separator • To directly remove ferrous materials (tinplate cans or tin lids) • floor-mounted • or suspended by support beams over a moving conveyor belt

15. Eddy current separator • separates conductive but nonferrous metals • from lightweight commingled waste • usually performed near the end of a separation • process • useful for separating aluminium from plastic mix High-frequency oscillatory magnetic fields induce an electric current in the conductive object This electric current generates a magnetic field, which causes the object to be repelled away from the primary magnetic field

16. Manual sorting Manual picking stations line one or both sides of the moving conveyor belt Each picking station usually is devoted to one type of recyclable material System is less capital intensive but it is labor-intensive For workers health manual sorting must be capsulated

17. Plastic sorting Automatic sorting by Near Infrared Technique (NIR) Position and material characterisation are scanned per Infrared Sensors notice the different reflections by the different plastics Computers analyse the data and direct blast pipes which remove the plastics pneumatically from the belt

18. Sorting of Light Weight Fraction and Paperin Augsburg