Equipment Report

BT-Wolfgang Binder Builds Glass Recycling Plant
Austria-based BT-Wolfgang Binder has built a glass powder plant for Dutch glass foam producer Geocell. The new plant, located in upper Austria, will produce foam glass ballast from recycled glass.

The plant has a discharge rate of six tons of broken scrap glass per hour. The facility consists of a material store, which includes raw material discharge, a drying and milling plant and a screening and classifying plant.

At the new plant, the glass delivered is stored in a covered material store and, using a wheel loader, conveyed into the discharge hopper. The raw material is transported by conveyors and belt bucket conveyor into a drum dryer, where the recycled glass is dried to a residual moisture of less than 0.5%. Metals and organic substances are separated and screened in the plant.

The material is then directed into the distribution table air separator, where the glass powder is separated. The finished glass powder product is intermediately stored in a silo or fed to the foam glass kiln by a pneumatically operated conveyor system.

BT-Wolfgang Binder says the foam glass ballast is a highly thermal insulating, load dissipating bulk material.

The complete system is de-dusted by modern hose filter systems. The complete plant is operated by a fully automatic, electronic control system that has been supplied by BT-Anlagenbau. Visualization is provided on screens that are operated from the control room. The facility was completed in 10 months.

Geocell foam glass ballast is described by BT-Wolfgang Binder a highly thermal insulating, load dissipating bulk material made from 100 percent recycled glass. The foam glass ballast combines numerous characteristics that can be ideal as an insulating material.

Tomra To Demo Autosort 4 at RWM
Norway-based Tomra Sorting Solutions will showcase its Titech autosort 4 equipment at the RWM (Resource Efficiency Waste Management Solutions) event, set for 10-12 Sept. 2013 in Birmingham, in the U.K. Visitors will be able to see live demonstrations of Titech autosort 4 for the first time in the show’s outside area at Stand OA151, Tomra reports.

Tomra says the Titech autosort 4 is suitable for a variety of applications and can recover a wide array of fractions from different waste streams, including packaging, paper, household waste and plastic.

“The U.K.’s C&I recycling sector is really taking off, but this complex waste stream is not without its challenges,” says Jonathan Clarke, country manager at Tomra Sorting. “In the past year, we have significantly increased our customer portfolio in this sector and now work closely with a number of the U.K.’s most advanced C&I MRFs.”

Toprak to Build Recycled Board Mill in Turkmenistan
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has extended a ¤3.74 million loan to Toprak Paper Products Company, a manufacturer of cardboard packaging in Turkmenistan, in Central Asia. The loan will be used to build a recycled paperboard mill. When complete, the mill will be the first private paper recycling facility in Turkmenistan. When operational, the facility will be capable of producing up to 25 tonnes of paper per day.

Toprak says it plans to sell a third of this output and use the remaining two-thirds for its cardboard packaging production.

The loan will enable Toprak to integrate its production cycle.

Viridor Selects Microlise Fleet Management Systems
U.K.-based Viridor has chosen Microlise, a maker of vehicle tracking, telematics, journey management and proof-of-delivery systems also based in the U.K., to provide transport operations services.

Viridor offers a range of services from recycling and waste collections, skips and bins, to fully integrated contracts for both the private and public sectors which has led to procurement of vehicles to meet the needs of its customers.

The Viridor U.K. fleet comprising more than 600 vehicles will be installed with Microlise Telematics devices at 40 locations over the coming months.

Viridor says it has defined goals in implementing Microlise’s Telematics and Transport Management solution, including reduction in carbon emissions, improvement in the safety of both drivers and the general public and further advancement of the company’s customer service standards.

Trials were carried out at Viridor’s London and Berkshire depots where the Microlise solution showed that an average fuel and carbon emissions saving of 5.9% was realised.

Andy Cordery, regional manager for collection services and fleet at Viridor says, “By using the data to focus on driving style, we saw a significant reduction in fuel consumption, which is beneficial in both economic and environmental terms. For a variety of reasons, some drivers save 3% in fuel and others save up to 11%—but we’re happy with the average.”