WRAP Touts Recycled Glass Usage at Shipyard

The trial compared the performance of recycled glass grit with copper slag – the shipyard’s usual abrasive – in blasting a mooring pontoon.

Graham Billany, managing director at Dunstons, said: “We’ve used copper slag for more than 30 years and while this is a cost effective material we were interested in exploring the potential of recycled glass grit as an environmentally friendly alternative.

“We agreed to a full scale trial, after the results of preliminary tests on different steel samples, including man hole covers, rusted cargo hold plates and heavily pitted ballast tanks, proved very encouraging.”

In the initial trials, recycled glass demonstrated improvements in productivity over the traditional copper slag of up to 240 per cent and the time taken for blasting was reduced by up to half.

The performance of medium grade recycled glass grit supplied by Wolverhampton Abrasives was compared with copper slag using the same blasting equipment.

Tom Dougherty, director of SSA, said: “These trials are part of a wider program, running since April 2005, designed to establish whether recycled glass grit can achieve a comparable surface profile to conventional abrasives, such as metal slags, olivine and garnet.

Any companies interested in setting up a trial or learning more about recycled glass applications should contact Andy Dawe at WRAP on 0808 100 2040.