Industry Sectors : Impact Recycling Solutions

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Advancing technology for the recycling industry

To support today's global drive to become greener and recycle more waste material, Impact Recycling Solutions (a division of Impact Air Systems) have developed a range of solutions to support fully automated recovery of domestic waste streams processed by MRF's (Material Reclamation Facility) or other similar recycling processes.

MRF's predominantly process household waste material such as newspaper, magazines, aluminium and steel cans, plastic bottles and card, they are baled into their respective grades.

To support the variety of automated recycling processes adopted in a MRF, Impact Air Systems offer the following range of equipment designed to complement the process.

Air Knife Separation

Air knives are used within the MRF to remove low-value 'lights' fractions from the comingled materials. These small 'unpickable' items such as plastic, foil and film, strips of paper and plastic bags need to be removed from the material stream. It is very difficult, costly and time consuming to manually carry out this process using pickers or sorters.

The air knife therefore makes a welcome inclusion within the MRF as it makes the remaining manual sorting activities easier and more productive and the automation it brings to the plant reduces the overall operating costs.

The air knife is typically installed at the transfer junction between two conveyor belts. The unit consists of an input air volume channelled through an adjustable nozzle, working in conjunction with an extraction hood. The material enters the Airknife via the input conveyor and falls under the action of gravity onto the next conveyor (either parallel or through a 90 degree turn). The input air creates a high velocity stream of air through which the falling material has to travel. It is at this stage that the lighter material fractions are blown or separated from the falling material stream and captured by the extraction hood. The heavier material fractions are unaffected by the incoming air stream and simply continue to fall on to the discharge conveyor.

Recent Installations
Veolia Environmental - Rainham MRF
Veolia Environmental - Brighton MRF (Hollingdean)
WRG / RE3 - Reading MRF(Smallmead)
Sita UK - Northumberland MRF (Sleekburn)
MID UK Recycling - Caythope (near Grantham)

Material take off hoods

To support the manual sorting process, Impact has developed a range of material take off hoods to enable large pieces of hand picked material to be withdrawn from the sorting cabins and conveyed away to a storage bunker or baler. Typically designed for handling such materials as plastic bags, pieces of film, long lengths of poly wrap or larger plastic bottles, these cleverly designed hoods are neatly incorporated into the sorting cabins to enable material to be hand fed by the operators and efficiency sucked away.

Often incorporating a closed loop design, our material take off hoods ensure noise levels are kept to a minimum and sorting cabins remain a neutral air pressure environment without the need for separate 'make up air' systems.

Recent Installations
MID UK Recycling - Caythope (near Grantham)

Glass cleaning (paper separation systems)

As glass is becoming more common place in the material stream within a MRF, finding cost effective, robust and efficient methods for removing recyclable paper material from the small fraction glass streams has become more demanding. Providing good quality contaminate free glass can add many thousands of pounds to your bottom line.

Impact Recycling Solutions has developed a robust and reliable glass cleaning system to remove the unpickable paper and other light density materials to be efficiently removed from the heavier density glass stream as the material discharges from the conveyor head. Typically installed on the small fraction material streams, our systems are engineered to withstand the highly abrasive nature of glass material and offer variable conveying air volumes to ensure efficient separation of the material types.

Recent Installations
MID UK Recycling - Caythope (near Grantham)
 

Dust control solutions

Processing domestic waste material in a MRF can generate nuisance dust issues which can create an unpleasant working environment for employees, housekeeping issues and significant fire risks as airborne dust particles come to rest on plant and equipment. Impact has vast experience of dust control solutions, enabling us to offer simple yet highly effective methods for capturing dust at source such as conveyor discharge or transfer points. These dust control solutions can be integrated into your MRF using stand alone fully automatic filter systems or incorporated into other centralised pneumatic conveying systems.

Recent Installations
Veolia Environmental - Brighton MRF (Hollingdean)
WRG / RE3 - Reading MRF(Smallmead)
Sita UK - Northumberland MRF (Sleekburn)

Ventilation systems

Whether a fresh air supply is required for manual sorting cabins or a central building ventilation system is required, Impact have the know how to offer cost effective solutions to make your MRF a clean and pleasant working environment for all your staff.

Recent Installations
MID UK Recycling - Caythope (near Grantham)

General Conveying System

Impact has gained a wealth of experience as the UK's leading waste extraction supplier to the paper, board, foil and film industries with almost 30 years trading. If you simply require material to be transported from A to B, then we can offer high efficiency, low energy consuming conveying systems (compared to traditional pneumatic conveying systems) to the MRF and recycling industries. Designed with durability, noise and running costs in mind, our systems offer reliable conveying solutions to the recycling industry.