Upstate Shredding LLC announces that it has completed a $25 million upgrade to its Owego, N.Y., plant. Upstate Shredding, one of the largest privately owned scrap metal recyclers on the East Coast, adds that completing the upgrade makes the facility one of the most state-of-the-art recycling facilities in the country.
In a press release, Adam Weitsman, president of Upstate, notes, “Industry experts tell us that there are few, if any other plants in the world that have achieved our level of technical sophistication in the maximum recovery of metals from the waste stream and in environmental responsibility.”
Innovations include the enclosure of the 200,000-square-foot Owego complex with an anticipated 2009 scrap production for all metal grades of about 700,000 tons. The company says that walling and roofing off the plant, and installing a storm water sewer system and on-site water treatment plant, has allowed the company to exceed U.S. EPA standards. The upgrade also resulted in the company being named the first “green” plant of its type, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Inside the shredder plant, the company has, and is in the process of adding several advanced metal recovery technologies, including:
¦ A 10,000 hp Riverside Engineering 122 inch Mega Shredder. The machine can shred complete automobiles, trucks and motor blocks at the rate 450 tons per hour. It is equipped with electronics such as cruise-control and automatic feed adjustments to increase productivity and reduce energy consumption. The machine, which weighs more than 500 tons, nearly doubles Upstate’s Owego production capacity.
¦ A polishing drum magnet system that automatically removes electric motors containing copper armatures from vehicles and eliminates the practice of hand-picking motors from fast moving conveyor belts. It results in virtually total recovery of these types of motors and improves worker safety.
¦ Four dynamic ferrous metal separation systems—using eddy current technology that segregate nonferrous metals.
¦ A dual-energy X-ray separator system, which identifies metal particles by atomic density and segregates aluminum from heavier metals, such as zinc, copper and brass.
¦ Six Sandjet dry heavy media plants, which is technology designed to remove copper from aluminum.
¦ Optic color sorters to separate yellow metals from red metals--each unit uses several ultra high-speed, high-resolution video cameras. Images of metals traveling on a conveyor belt go to a computer that analyzes metals by shape and color to trigger automatic separation.
¦ An $8 million dollar wire recovery system, which is a new method for recovering copper wire encased in plastic insulation.
“Our next goal is to recover glass and plastic as soon as we can find the technology to do it efficiently. Our corporate mission is to extract the last ounce of value from the materials we process, not only to keep material out landfills, but also to help conserve natural resources,” Weitsman says.