The virtues of redundancy

In material recovery facilities (MRFs), baler redundancy can have a couple meanings, from having more than one baler at a single facility, ensuring the movement of material to end markets, to having the same makes and models of balers installed across a number of facilities, simplifying stocking spare parts. For Robb Espinosa, senior vice president of operations at Balcones Recycling, baler redundancy means both these things and more.

Keeping things running

Austin, Texas-based Balcones, a business unit of New York-based Circular Services and Closed Loop Partners, operates a MRF in that city as well as in San Antonio and Taylor, Texas; Little Rock, Arkansas; Fort Myers, Sarasota and West Palm Beach, Florida; Brooklyn and Rockland, New York; Jersey City, New Jersey; Phoenix; and Normal, Illinois. The company also operates commercial recycling facilities in Dallas and Farmers Branch, Texas; Peoria and Urbana, Illinois; and Terre Haute, Indiana.

As the heart of a MRF, balers play an essential role in their efficient operation. “I watched one of our plants struggle over the last week with some baler issues, and it’s hurt their overall performance because they’ve had to stop running the system because of full bunkers,” Espinosa tells Recycling Today in late December of last year. “That redundancy needs to work.”

Espinosa says Balcones prioritizes baler redundancy not just at its individual MRFs but across its operations, running a number of two-ram balers made by Sierra International Machinery of Bakersfield, California; Harris of Cordele, Georgia; and Machinex of Plessissville, Quebec; as well as single-ram balers manufactured by Machinex; Milan-based Macpresse; Bollegraaf, based in the Netherlands; Bellevue, Ohio-based American Baler Co.; and International Baler Corp. (IBC), based in Jacksonville, Florida.

While he says Balcones designs its MRFs with two balers to ensure continued operations even if a baler should go down, the company generally selects a single-ram baler to process fiber and a two-ram baler to handle containers.

“But they both need to be able to handle all of our products,” Espinosa adds.

Even with two balers, he continues, “If one or the other goes down, you’re going to be [operating] at reduced efficiency because you built the plant to run with both of them.” In that case, Espinosa says, the MRF might need to operate an additional half shift to bale all the material.

Selecting the right balers

When selecting baling equipment for Balcones’ MRFs and commercial recycling facilities, the company tends to stick with similar manufacturers, especially in Texas, which provides Balcones the ability to streamline its spare parts inventories.

“We want to work with all the vendors,” Espinosa says, and availability also factors into its selection of baling equipment, which is why Balcones purchased a Bollegraaf baler from Van Dyk Recycling Solutions of Norwalk, Connecticut, for its Austin MRF earlier this decade.

“At the end of the day, it’s how is the baler going to perform, how are you going to support it and what does it cost?” he says of some of the factors Balcones considers when selecting baling equipment.

When selecting balers for Balcones’ plants, Espinosa prefers to err toward oversizing. “Don’t buy too small,” he advises, while also cautioning against overspending by buying one that is too big. “But I’d rather buy a baler that’s too big,” Espinosa adds, noting that with balers that have two 100-horsepower motors, you can shut off one of the motors, but you can’t add a second one.

Espinosa says it’s important to match your baler’s capabilities with the MRF’s bunker capacity when designing a new MRF. “You don’t want to build a bunker that only holds half a bale. You want to look at how you can time that, but then you need to look at … can that baler keep up with that volume?”

He adds that baler manufacturers can help MRF operators select the right baler for the job.

When shopping for baling equipment, Espinosa also suggests getting input from other operators.

“Go see other people. Testimonials mean a lot, especially unsolicited.”

Baler feeding

When it comes to feeding its balers, Balcones uses push-through bunkers for fiber and gravity bins for materials to fall directly onto the baler’s infeed conveyor at its Taylor plant, which operates a single two-ram IBC baler.

At its MRFs with two balers, as in Austin, Espinosa says Balcones easily can feed material to either baler. “Anything new that we’ve done has that same redundancy,” he says. “In San Antonio, we can run to either baler using auger silos or live-bottom conveyor bunkers.”

Balcones uses auger silos designed by CP Group, San Diego, at its San Antonio MRF that use two rotating augers at the bottom and a leveling auger at the top. The bottom augers act as a material metering system, eliminating half and quarter bales by emptying the correct amount of material to be baled, while the leveling auger ensures material is evenly distributed in the silo. “The bunkers are bigger because they have flat bottoms, so they screw out at the bottom and dump on a conveyor that can go to one of two balers,” Espinosa says.

The company’s Austin MRF uses walking floors in its bunkers to feed material to its balers.

“I prefer conveyors more than walking floors,” Espinosa says. “They both have issues over time, but the conveyors in a big bunker seem to have a lot less problems over time than the walking floors because walking floors get to the point where you have to repair the slats,” he says, in part because of the abrasiveness of the material.

Regarding the conveyors Balcones uses, he says the company is moving away from using roller chain conveyors for feeding its balers. “We have them in San Antonio, but I think it’s almost overkill,” Espinosa explains. “You don’t need them as much as you used to. Conveyor technology and design is letting you get a little bit more away from having to do that. Roller chain [conveyors] with cleats in an incline series at a severe angle is probably still warranted depending on the materials you’re baling, but we’re finding that we don’t have to always be buying the heavy-duty stuff.”

Espinosa says if MRF operators want to completely automate their balers’ operation to maximize efficiency, infeed conveyors must be selected with that in mind.

Balcones also has set up its Austin and San Antonio MRFs so material can be directly fed to the balers from the floor.

“That’s just another important feature to be able to deal with partial bales or materials that need to be rebaled or clean materials that don’t need to be run through the system,” Espinosa says.

Maintenance and support

Balcones handles preventive maintenance on its balers mostly in-house and stocks a number of critical replacement parts, which is simplified because the company largely runs like or similar balers across its various locations.

While Espinosa says you can’t keep every valve and pump on hand, the company asks its baler manufacturers to provide a list of recommended spare parts and those that tend to have a long lead time.

“It’s hard to justify buying a cylinder, but you’ll really be mad at yourself when you don’t and you need one because it doesn’t get rebuilt overnight,” he says. “So, having a spare cylinder is a big deal.”

He also suggests stocking some primary valves, contact switches, filters, screens and other supplies needed for oil changes, seals and bearings, a complete O-ring kit, shear knives, shims of various sizes, pipe clamps or clevis pins, proximity sensors, photoelectric sensors and transducers.

“Anything you’ve got multiples of [on your balers], you get one” stocked in your spare parts inventory, he says.

MRF operators can rely on dealers or manufacturers to stock and supply other spare parts, he says, noting that Balcones also has baler and tier manufacturers visit annually to inspect their machines.

It’s important to have maintenance professionals on staff who can perform preventive and emergency maintenance on baling equipment, Espinosa adds. This enables MRF operators to avoid spending “a fortune” paying outside contractors and being at the mercy of their schedules.

Balcones has personnel on staff who have been working on the company’s balers for 20-plus years. “They pretty much can do it with their eyes closed,” Espinosa says.

Baling technology has not changed much in that time, he says, apart from the controls.

“It seems you almost have to have an electrician on staff anymore” to deal with issues that might arise there.

The company has an electrician on-site in Austin who works a swing shift so he’s there when the system is taken down for maintenance daily between 2-6 p.m. “We have a four-hour gap between our two shifts so that we do maintenance every day,” Espinosa explains. “He comes in in the middle of that shift.”

With proper maintenance, Espinosa says, balers easily can last two decades if not longer. “But you’ve got to invest the time,” he adds.

That investment, in addition to redundancy, can help to ensure the heart of the MRF keeps beating, allowing the facility to continue supplying its consumers with recycled feedstock.

The author is editorial director of Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at dtoto@gie.net.