Stadler completes installation in Spain

The Spain-based Stadler Selecciona S.L.U. subsidiary of Stadler Anlagenbau GmbH has completed the installation of a new sorting plant at the Torija waste and recycling center in Spain.

Stadler undertook the project in cooperation with the Consortium for the Management of Urban Waste of the Province of Guadalajara, Spain. That consortium includes 288 municipalities and 21 associations of additional municipalities. State-affiliated company Grupo Tragsa, based in Madrid, also was involved.

The Torija center, managed by UTE RSU Guadalajara, serves the entire province of about 260,000 people in central Spain. The facility receives materials from transfer stations and directly from 22 municipalities, and includes a sorting plant, a composting plant, leachate treatment and a landfill site.

“The new facility was required to fit within [an] existing building and process both municipal solid waste (MSW) and light packaging,” Stadler says.

“A visit to Stadler’s headquarters in Altshausen was a turning point for us and gave us great peace of mind during manufacturing because we saw firsthand the high technological level of its facilities and the quality of its staff and products,” says Antonio Marzal, managing director with Grupo Tragsa.

The new sorting plant has an input capacity of 40 tons per hour when processing MSW and 4 tons per hour when it is working with light packaging, a stream that consists of plastic and containers.

The process begins with trommel screens followed by a Stadler STT 5000 ballistic separator designed to sort household waste, mixed commercial waste and bulky waste.

Next in line are three optical sorters to single out polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic containers from other marketable items (including non-PET or HDPE plastics, cardboard and aseptic cartons), followed by sorters to separate the aluminum and steel cans.

The addition of the ballistic separator and optical sorters has improved the recovery rates and efficiency of the sorting plant, increasing its capacity to more than 100,000 tons per year of MSW and in excess of 12,000 tons per year of light packaging material, the equipment maker says.

The project started with the dismantling of the previous plant, which took three weeks. The assembly of the new plant was completed in 10 weeks, and it was inaugurated on schedule at the end of April.

“In this project, it was very important for the startup of the plant to take place on a specific date, and Stadler made it happen,” Marzal says.

One challenge was installing the new system in the existing footprint. “This meant that all tasks had to be carried out with a high degree of precision,” he says. “Despite the pressure of the execution deadlines, we have felt assured at all times that everything will be completed on time as agreed.”

“We at Stadler are very proud of the work we did on the Torija plant,” says Carlos Manchado Atienza, international sales director at Stadler. “The high-quality work of our engineers ensured the successful installation within the existing building. Also, excellent communication with the different suppliers involved was key to keeping the project on schedule and delivering on all the project requirements.”