The U.K.-based metals recycling firm Vulcanis has designed and built a recycling plant to receive and recover steel and aluminium cans at its Barking, U.K., facility. To maximize the can recycling efforts, the company purchased a twin pole cross belt magnet for steel can recovery from Bunting Magnetics Europe Ltd.

The inspiration for the new plant came from Vulcanis’ Managing Director Mena Ramsis. “I was not involved in the recycling industry and only became interested when I was attending a wedding and wondered what happened to the waste,” says Ramsis. “When I started researching, I could see that there was a need for additional recycling centres right across the U.K. and decided to build the Vulcanis plant in Barking.”
The plant was designed and built by in-house engineers after two years of global research and includes equipment sourced from three continents. A key part of that research focused on separation equipment, including the magnetic separator for steel can recovery.
Vulcanis ordered the cross belt overband magnet from Bunting because of the strength and design of the magnetic circuitry.
According to Bunting, Vulcanis executives found the Bunting design to be fundamentally different from magnets utilising a single pole. Bunting’s twin pole cross belt magnet projects two separate magnetic fields onto the surface of the conveyor belt, doubling the chance of capturing the steel cans, thus maximising recovery, Bunting says.
The cross belt overband magnet was installed in August 2014. The Vulcanis plant is designed to receive two tonnes per hour of mixed materials with no organics. The materials are received from across the UK, often from existing recycling plants that are unable to produce a clean end product of separated metal or plastic.
Plastic recyclers send Vulcanis byproducts, often destined for landfill. The recycler processes the material, removing the metal before selling the plastic back to the byproducts supplier. Due to the variable infeed, the split of the plastics, steel and aluminium output varies considerably on almost a daily basis, the company reports. Presently, about 10 percent of the plant’s infeed is landfilled, although the aim is to reduce the landfill rate to zero.
Bunting reports that the plant is now at 40 percent of capacity, operating eight hours per day, five days per week. The steel and aluminium output is more than 99 percent pure with a high proportion being exported.
Ramsis observes, “We are building our business by offering our suppliers and partners favourable commercial terms and on the basis of opening up new opportunities for companies to reduce their waste and recover more material. The response from the industry has been incredible, and we are already looking at expanding the plant. Our aim is to be processing 12 tonnes per hour in the next 5 years.”
Carlton Hicks, Bunting UK sales manager, adds, “Working with Mena and Vulcanis has been a pleasure. Their attention to detail has been acute and this means that we were able to demonstrate that the Bunting design of overband magnet was exactly what they needed to maximise steel can recovery.”
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