The Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC) is providing a $30 million loan for the construction of an aluminum recycling plant in Turkey. When operational, the facility, scaled to be around 6,500 square meters large, will be able to produce around 60,000 tons of recycled aluminum, in liquid form, per year. The company is using U.S. technology to build the plant.
The facility is being located near Istanbul, Turkey. The plant will recycle both used beverage cans and clean industrial scrap into liquid aluminum, which will be sold to primary and secondary manufacturers in Turkey and the local spot market. The plant, which will use natural gas as fuel, became fully operational in November.
The U.S. sponsor of the project is Chinook Sciences International LLC, part of Chinook Sciences Group, a New Jersey-based scientific research engineering company that is involved in developing gasification technology.
The facility will employ RODECS equipment, which gasifies all organic material from scrap metal, thereby transforming low quality contaminated metal scrap into high-value metal. The RODECS gasifies, rather than burns, the materials so that the scrap metal is cleaned with minimal yield loss.
“This project demonstrates that clean technology applies not only to energy production, but to industrial processes such as recycling, by using innovative means to both reduce emissions and save customers valuable time and expense,” says Lawrence Spinelli, OPIC’s acting president. “OPIC is pleased to support a project that supports the development of the Turkish economy and the utilization of state-of-the-art U.S. clean technology.”