The equipment company Vecoplan will introduce its HydroDyn plastics washing Line to the North American market at the NPE 2015 show, March 23-27 in Orlando, Florida. Vecoplan, Archdale, North Carolina, says its HydroDyn technology has been proven in European recycling plants and backed by test results that show its process produces cleaner plastic flakes and delivers lower operating costs. The company claims that the equipment is more economical to install and maintain than conventional plastics washing lines.

HydroDyn uses water spun in a cyclonic fashion to generate horizontal friction and clean plastic flakes suspended in that water to produce flakes that are 30 percent cleaner than conventional washing lines, according to Vecoplan. 

Tetronics International, Wiltshire, U.K., has signed a deal to provide its plasma arc technology to Duncan Recycling & Refining (DR2), Duncan, Oklahoma, which will allow DR2 to recover precious metals from automobile catalytic converters.

Tetronics says its plasma arc system is recognized globally as a sustainable solution for recovering resources from materials including spent catalysts, electronics and mining ores.

David Nichols, DR2 president, says he decided to install Tetronics’ plasma arc technology after seeing the system in action during a trip to Europe two years ago. The plasma arc technology, DR2 says, will be central to its new business, which will use it to extract and refine platinum group metals (PGM) and ceramics found in catalytic converters.

The plant will be able to process 6 metric tons of catalytic converters per day. Following the process, the waste that is not deemed valuable will be converted into an inert material called Plasmarok, which can be used as a building aggregate.

Graeme Rumbol, CEO of Tetronics International, says, “We are delighted to have signed this agreement, and we are very much looking forward to seeing the plant become operational.”

Rumbol continues, “Duncan Recycling & Refining was established partly due to seeing our technology— demonstrating that Tetronics is a world leader in precious metal recovery.

“This deal shows Tetronics is regarded across the world as the market leader in the recovery of precious metals, and we’re looking forward to continuing our strong growth path over the coming months.”

David Nichols, president of DR2, says, “We are very excited about using Tetronics’ technology; it is absolutely essential to our business. We are already looking at other ways we can work with them, so we have the capacity to refine even more metals.

ArcelorMittal Montreal, headquartered in Contrecoeur, Quebec, has announced that by the second half of 2015 it will restart the auto shredder at its Contrecoeur-Feruni scrap recycling and processing facility, which is located at the steel company’s bar steel operations. Idled in December 2012, the shredder will serve as a main scrap processing and sorting operation when it is restarted, the company says.

The company also has announced that it has sold off its Ottawa, Ontario, recycling and processing center and the land and building for its La Prairie, Quebec, recycling and processing center to American Iron & Metal Co., headquartered in Montreal.

Along with restarting the auto shredder, ArcelorMittal Montreal says it will hire and train 10 employees for the Contrecoeur-Feruni yard.

"After a thorough analysis of the market, we determined that using Contrecoeur-Feruni as our main scrap processing platform was the most efficient use of our assets. We remain committed in the scrap metal business as it enables us to manufacture safe, sustainable steel with recycled materials," says Louis-Philippe Péloquin, ArcelorMittal Montrealdirector of communications. As one of the largest local recyclers of steel in Quebec with more than 850,000 tons reused annually, ArcelorMittal Montreal will continue obtaining its scrap metal from multiple sources.

The Ottawa sale is effective March 2, 2015, whereas operations in La Prairie are expected to permanently cease  uly 17, 2015. "We would like to thank our Ottawa and La Prairie employees for their dedication over the years," Péloquin adds.

In addition to its scrap metal processing facility in Contrecoeur, the company operates one iron ore reduction plant, two steel plants, three rolling mills and two wire drawing mills. Its Canadian operations also include bar mills in Longueuil, Quebec, and in Hamilton, Ontario.

ArcelorMittal Montreal is a steel producer with 11 locations in Quebec and Ontario. The company’s main production facilities are at ArcelorMittal Montreal’s Contrecoeur headquarters and include a direct reduction plant, two steel plants, a bar mill and a wire rod mill. Other facilities include a bar mill in Longueuil (Quebec), as well as wire mills in St. Patrick (Montreal) and Hamilton. The company specializes in manufacturing semifinished products, such as billets, slabs, bars and rod.

ArcelorMittal Montreal is part of ArcelorMittal’s Long Carbon North America group.

A collection of companies recently partnered with a California city on a three-month pilot project to determine the feasibility of effectively collecting difficult-to-recycle plastic products.

The program, called the Energy Bag Pilot Program, brought together Dow Chemical, the Flexible Packaging Association, Republic Services, Agilyx, Reynolds Consumer Products and the city of Citrus Heights, California, on a project to divert packaging products such as juice pouches, candy wrappers and plastic dinnerware to a plastics-to-fuel facility where they could be converted into synthetic crude oil.

During the pilot program, which ran from June to August 2014, about 26,000 households in Citrus Heights were provided with purple bags, which the partners called "energy bags." Residents were asked to collect plastic items not currently eligible for the city’s mechanical recycling. The bags were collected during the community’s regular biweekly recycling program, sorted at the recycling facility and the plastics in the energy bags were shipped to Agilyx’s plastics-to-energy plant in Oregon, where the scrap plastics were converted into a fuel product.

Agilyx ultimately was pleased with the quality of the material it received through the program, according to a Dow representative. Even the outthrows that were included in the bags were materials that were not damaging to Agilyx’s system, the Dow representative notes.

Agilyx’s thermal pyrolysis technology, which Dow says is complementary to current mechanical recycling programs, allowed the company to convert the collected plastics into high-value synthetic crude oil, which could be further refined into gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, fuel oil, lubricants and plastic.

“We were extremely excited to work with all the partners involved on this first-of-its-kind pilot in the U.S.,” says Greg Jozwiak, North American commercial vice president, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics. “Through the power of this collaboration, we gained significant knowledge regarding an alternative method that complements plastics recycling and shows that nonrecycled plastic waste can be diverted from landfills, extracted for its embedded energy and put to good use. There is more work to be done to validate this option and Dow is committed to help drive this concept.”

Six collections were held during the three-month program. Results included:

• Nearly 8,000 purple Energy Bags were collected.
• About 6,000 pounds of typically nonrecycled items were diverted from landfills.
• The conversion produced 512 gallons of synthetic crude oil. 
• The city acheived a 30 percent citizen participation rate.
• The majorirty of citizens (78 percent) said they would be participate if given another chance. 

“We were very proud to be the first community in America to participate in the Energy Bag initiative,” says Citrus Heights Mayor Sue Frost. “The program demonstrated how communities nationwide can benefit by diverting typically nonrecycled plastics from landfills and give them new life as an energy resource.”

“This is an important milestone toward advancing change in the way we handle waste in the U.S.,” says Jeff Wooster, global sustainability leader, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics. “This pilot proved that resource recovery of nonrecycled plastics is a viable municipal process. Our collaborative efforts brought us one step closer to reducing plastic waste by converting it to energy.”

To view the final report on the Energy Bag, click here.