UNTHA shredder gets to work at UK WEEE recycling plant

With 10.3 million tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) produced every year in the European Union, WEEE is posing a growing environmental and compliance challenge for the recycling industry. As little as one-third of generated WEEE is collected for processing throughout the EU each year.

One firm in the south of England is attempting to make strides in the WEEE sector and has invested considerably in technology it says will boost its WEEE recovery, recycling and revenue figures.

With more than 30 years’ industry experience, Altech Trading Co. is no stranger to the nuances of WEEE recycling. Predominantly handling redundant telecoms infrastructure and information technology (IT) devices ranging from servers to circuit boards, Altech’s secure facility in Southend-on-Sea, England, has been designed to provide a turnkey WEEE recycling service from collection to disposal.

The company’s focus is to ensure legislative and environmental compliance for its clients. By typically processing some 2,500 tonnes of WEEE per year, Altech says it strives to maximise recycling rates for optimum sustainability and revenue yield.

Altech says it has demonstrated its commitment to the local processing of WEEE materials with a recent investment in a shredder and downstream sorting system.

“WEEE is one of the world’s fastest growing waste streams, largely because of continued technological innovation in an era of ‘must have’ gadgets and appliances,” says Altech Managing Director Colin Warren. “Also, as disappointing as this sounds, we live in a somewhat ‘throwaway’ society. Yes, there are many people who will invest in the repair of electrical equipment when things go wrong, but there are also plenty others who will simply dispose of the device in favour of a new replacement.”

Like many WEEE recyclers, Altech has acknowledged that whilst people may no longer have a use for an electrical item, that doesn’t mean the equipment has reached its end of life. In fact, even if the device itself is no longer functional, it can still retain significant value.

The team has therefore worked hard to establish a best-practice process to liberate the high-worth composite materials found within WEEE. High-grade units are manually stripped for optimum recyclate extraction, but this approach alone is not enough. That’s why, alongside this labour-intensive process, Altech also mechanically breaks down some of its WEEE items. This aids the further sorting and segregation of precious metals and other commodities that would otherwise remain difficult to recover.

On this mechanical processing side, Altech’s first asset investment was a second-hand hammer-mill-style shredder. The company says the machine couldn’t achieve the particle refinement necessary to support an efficient recyclate recovery process.

The Altech team therefore went back to the drawing board, and further marketplace research brought it to the high-torque, slow-speed shredder design.

The company researched several brands that could provide four-shaft, high-torque machines, searching for precision cutters and screens that could achieve “a more sophisticated shred than if the WEEE was simply shattered with the hammer.”

Altech eventually selected an RS100 model shredder made by Austria-based UNTHA. The second-largest of UNTHA’s four-shaft machines, UNTHA says the RS100 is built to withstand tough applications but is equipped with a shredding system that can achieve fraction homogeneity “down to the millimetre.”

Because every shredding scenario is different, the RS100 is built to be configured. So, on the basis of the requirements outlined during initial discussions, UNTHA’s Austrian headquarters specified what it determined was the best blade configuration for Altech’s complex WEEE application. But as the heavyweight shredder processed the varied and multifaceted waste streams, the cutters became less effective after 400 hours.

UNTHA’s WEEE shredding specialists therefore visited the site to re-evaluate the machine set-up. A new cutter configuration was devised and installed and, more than 12 months later, the blades are still in successful operation.

Devices ranging from modems and servers to computer towers and telecoms modules are all processed in the RS100, at a rate of up to 1.5 tonnes per hour. The machine’s capacity could allow for greater throughputs, but with a keen eye on quality, says Altech, the firm is “keen to not overwhelm the downstream sorting equipment within the plant.”

The particle size can be adjusted by using different screen configurations. When the WEEE fraction exits the discharge conveyor, it then travels past an overband magnet to extract ferrous metals, an eddy current separator (ECS) to remove the circuit boards from nonferrous materials and an optical sorter to clean anything that the ECS hasn’t already refined.

“The RS100 now feeds our downstream segregation equipment with a high-quality, homogenous fraction that can be handled with ease,” says Warren. “These segregated material streams are then sent for recycling [melting], with steel and aluminium handled in the U.K., for example, and precious metals refined in Germany.”

Warren continues, “Whilst this project was far from straightforward, operators within our industry need to work harder to tackle the mounting problem that complex WEEE presents. I am delighted that we now have a sophisticated, easy-to-use shredding system in place that has improved our recyclate recovery rates and presented us with new business opportunities.”

Altech’s recycling throughputs have risen dramatically since the system was installed, and further company growth is projected over the next 12 months, according to the firm.

“We have been very ambitious in our attempts to change the face of WEEE recycling, and, whilst such difficult projects don’t always go 100% right the first time, our continued perseverance, plus the knowledge and tenacity of the UNTHA team, has meant we now have a comprehensive shredding system in place,” says Warren. He adds, “This isn’t the end of our recycling story – in fact it is the very beginning.”