Materials recovery facility

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A materials recovery facility for the recycling of domestic waste Non-selective domestic waste sorting machine.JPG
A materials recovery facility for the recycling of domestic waste
Clean materials recovery facility recycling video

A materials recovery facility, materials reclamation facility, materials recycling facility or multi re-use facility (MRF, pronounced "murf") is a specialized waste sorting and recycling system [1] that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers. Generally, the main recyclable materials include ferrous metal, non-ferrous metal, plastics, paper, glass. Organic food waste is used to assist anaerobic digestion or composting. Inorganic inert waste is used to make building materials. Non-recyclable high calorific value waste is used to making RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel) and SRF (Solid Recovered Fuel.)

Contents

Industry and locations

In the United States, there are over 300 materials recovery facilities. [2] The total market size is estimated at $6.6B as of 2019. [3]

As of 2016, the top 75 were headed by Sims Municipal Recycling out of Brooklyn, New York. [4] Waste Management operated 95 MRF facilities total, with 26 in the top 75. ReCommunity operated 6 in the top 75. Republic Services operated 6 in the top 75. Waste Connections operated 4 in the top 75.

Business economics

In 2018, a survey in the Northeast United States found that the processing cost per ton was $82, versus a value of around $45 per ton. [5] Composition of the ton included 28% mixed paper and 24% old corrugated containers (OCC). [5]

Prices for OCC declined into 2019. [6] Three paper mill companies have announced initiatives to use more recycled fiber. [7]

Glass recycling is expensive for these facilities, but a study estimated that costs could be cut significantly by investments in improved glass processing. [8] In Texas, Austin and Houston have facilities which have invested glass recycling, built and operated by Balcones Recycling and FCC Environment, respectively. [9]

Robots have spread across the industry, helping with sorting. [10]

Process

Waste enters a MRF when it is dumped onto the tipping floor by the collection trucks. The materials are then scooped up and placed onto conveyor belts, which transports it to the pre-sorting area. Here, human workers remove some items that are not recyclable, which will either be sent to a landfill or an incinerator. [11] Between 5 and 45% of "dirty" MRF material is recovered.[ citation needed ] Potential hazards are also removed, such as lithium batteries, propane tanks, and aerosol cans, which can create fires. Materials like plastic bags and hoses, which can entangle the recycling equipment, are also removed. [11] From there, materials are transported via another conveyer belt to the disk screen, which separates wide and flat materials like flattened cardboard boxes from items like cans, jars, paper, and bottles. Flattened boxes ride across the disk screen to the other side, while all other materials fall below, where paper is separated from the waste stream with a blower. The stream of cardboard and paper is overseen by more human workers, who ensure no plastic, metal, or glass is present. [11] Newer MRFs or retrofitted ones may use industrial robots instead of humans for pre-sorting and for quality control. [11] However, complete removal of human labor from the sortation process is unlikely for the foreseeable future, as one needs to replicate the dexterity of the human hand and nervous system for removing every type of contaminant within a material stream. The technical limitations of this involve advanced concepts in mechatronics and computer science, where a robot hand would need to be designed, and a highly flexible algorithm that creates another precise movement algorithm within the time constraints of the system (say, the highly approximate estimate of 30,000 lines of code to do this on a modern processor would trigger too long of a delay to be effective on a sortation line). In other words, one would need to search an encyclopedia of said robotic hand motions for every configuration of waste for every pick, and this may be computationally insurmountable, even with quantum computing, as every conditional would need to be checked every iteration.[ citation needed ]

Metal is separated from plastics and glass first with electromagnets, which removes ferrous metals. Non-ferrous metals like aluminum are then removed with eddy current separators. [11]

The glass and plastic streams are separated by further disk screens. The glass is crushed into cullet for ease of transportation. The plastics are then separated by polymer type, often using infrared technology (optical sorting). Infrared light reflects differently off different polymer types; once identified, a jet of air shoots the plastic into the appropriate bin. MRFs might only collect and recycle a few polymers of plastic, sending the rest to landfills or incinerators. The separated materials are baled and sent to the shipping dock of the facility. [11]

Main processing building at the Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, Brooklyn, New York - 2015 Cycle sorters.jpg
Main processing building at the Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, Brooklyn, New York - 2015

Types

Clean

A clean MRF accepts recyclable materials that have already been separated at the source from municipal solid waste generated by either residential or commercial sources. There are a variety of clean MRFs. The most common are single stream where all recyclable material is mixed, or dual stream MRFs, where source-separated recyclables are delivered in a mixed container stream (typically glass, ferrous metal, aluminum and other non-ferrous metals, PET [No.1] and HDPE [No.2] plastics) and a mixed paper stream including corrugated cardboard boxes, newspapers, magazines, office paper and junk mail. Material is sorted to specifications, then baled, shredded, crushed, compacted, or otherwise prepared for shipment to market.

Mixed-waste processing facility (MWPF) / Dirty MRF

Manual material triage for recycling TriagemDeLixo.jpg
Manual material triage for recycling

A mixed-waste processing system, sometimes referred to as a dirty MRF, accepts a mixed solid waste stream and then proceeds to separate out designated recyclable materials through a combination of manual and mechanical sorting. The sorted recyclable materials may undergo further processing required to meet technical specifications established by end-markets while the balance of the mixed waste stream is sent to a disposal facility such as a landfill. Today, MWPFs are attracting renewed interest as a way to address low participation rates for source-separated recycling collection systems and prepare fuel products and/or feedstocks for conversion technologies. MWPFs can give communities the opportunity to recycle at much higher rates than has been demonstrated by curbside or other waste collection systems. Advances in technology make today’s MWPF different and, in many respects better, than older versions. [12]

Wet MRF

A wet materials recovery facility MBT sorting.jpg
A wet materials recovery facility

Around 2004, new mechanical biological treatment technologies were beginning to utilise wet MRFs. [13] These combine a dirty MRF with water, which acts to densify, separate and clean the output streams. It also hydrocrushes and dissolves biodegradable organics in solution to make them suitable for anaerobic digestion.

History

In the United States, modern MRFs began in the 1970s. Peter Karter established Resource Recovery Systems, Inc. in Branford, Connecticut, the "first materials recovery facility (MRF)" in the US. [14] [15] [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recycling</span> Converting waste materials into new products

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its original state. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution and water pollution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PET bottle recycling</span> Recycling of bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate

Although PET is used in several applications, as of 2022 only bottles are collected at a substantial scale. The main motivations have been either cost reduction or recycle content of retail goods. An increasing amount is recycled back into bottles, the rest goes into fibres, film, thermoformed packaging and strapping. After sorting, cleaning and grinding, 'bottle flake' is obtained, which is then processed by either:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plastic recycling</span> Processes which convert waste plastic into new items

Plastic recycling is the processing of plastic waste into other products. Recycling can reduce dependence on landfill, conserve resources and protect the environment from plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling rates lag behind those of other recoverable materials, such as aluminium, glass and paper. From the start of plastic production through to 2015, the world produced around 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste, only 9% of which has been recycled and only ~1% has been recycled more than once. Of the remaining waste, 12% was incinerated and 79% was either sent to landfills or lost to the environment as pollution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Municipal solid waste</span> Type of waste consisting of everyday items discarded by the public

Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, as in a garbage disposal; the two are sometimes collected separately. In the European Union, the semantic definition is 'mixed municipal waste,' given waste code 20 03 01 in the European Waste Catalog. Although the waste may originate from a number of sources that has nothing to do with a municipality, the traditional role of municipalities in collecting and managing these kinds of waste have produced the particular etymology 'municipal.'

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glass recycling</span> Processing of turning glass waste into usable products

Glass recycling is the processing of waste glass into usable products. Glass that is crushed or imploded and ready to be remelted is called cullet. There are two types of cullet: internal and external. Internal cullet is composed of defective products detected and rejected by a quality control process during the industrial process of glass manufacturing, transition phases of product changes and production offcuts. External cullet is waste glass that has been collected or reprocessed with the purpose of recycling. External cullet is classified as waste. The word "cullet", when used in the context of end-of-waste, will always refer to external cullet.

A mechanical biological treatment (MBT) system is a type of waste processing facility that combines a sorting facility with a form of biological treatment such as composting or anaerobic digestion. MBT plants are designed to process mixed household waste as well as commercial and industrial wastes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerbside collection</span> Household waste collection service

Kerbside collection or curbside collection is a service provided to households, typically in urban and suburban areas, of collecting and disposing of household waste and recyclables. It is usually accomplished by personnel using specially built vehicles to pick up household waste in containers that are acceptable to, or prescribed by, the municipality and are placed on the kerb.

A waste autoclave is a form of solid waste treatment that uses heat, steam and pressure of an industrial autoclave in the processing of waste. Waste autoclaves process waste either in batches or in continuous-flow processes. In batch processes, saturated steam is pumped into the autoclave at temperatures around 160 °C, or 320 °F. The steam pressure in the vessel is maintained up to 6 bars (gauge) for a period of up to 45 minutes to allow the process to fully 'cook' the waste. The autoclave process gives a very high pathogen and virus kill rate, although the fibrous products which come from the process are susceptible to bacteria and fungus as they are high in starch, cellulose and amino acids. When designed for sterilizing waste containing mostly liquids, a waste autoclave is known as an Effluent Decontamination System.

Landfill mining and reclamation (LFMR) is a process which excavates and processes solid wastes which have previously been landfilled. The process aims to reduce the amount of landfill mass encapsulated within the closed landfill and/or temporarily remove hazardous material to allow protective measures to be taken before the landfill mass is replaced. In the process, mining recovers valuable recyclable materials, a combustible fraction, soil, and landfill space. The aeration of the landfill soil is a secondary benefit with regard to the landfill's future use. The combustible fraction is useful for power generation. The overall appearance of the landfill mining procedure is a sequence of processing machines laid out in a functional conveyor system. The operating principle is to excavate, sieve and sort the landfill material.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waste sorting</span> Environmental practice of separating waste categories to make it easy to recycle

Waste sorting is the process by which waste is separated into different elements. Waste sorting can occur manually at the household and collected through curbside collection schemes, or automatically separated in materials recovery facilities or mechanical biological treatment systems. Hand sorting was the first method used in the history of waste sorting. Waste can also be sorted in a civic amenity site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sims Metal Management</span> Global environmental services conglomerate

Sims Limited (formerly Sims Metal Management Limited) is a global environmental services conglomerate, operating through a number of divisions, with a focus on: (a) Ferrous and Non-ferrous metal recycling, (b) enterprise data destruction and cloud asset management (c) post-consumer electronic goods recycling and reuse, (d) municipal waste recycling, (e) gas to energy, and (f) waste to energy. Founded in 1917, its primary operations are located in the United States, Australia and the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Single-stream recycling</span>

Single-stream recycling refers to a system in which all paper fibers, plastics, metals, and other containers are mixed in a collection truck, instead of being sorted by the depositor into separate commodities and handled separately throughout the collection process. In single-stream, both the collection and processing systems are designed to handle this fully commingled mixture of recyclables, with materials being separated for reuse at a materials recovery facility.

Recycling can be carried out on various raw materials. Recycling is an important part of creating more sustainable economies, reducing the cost and environmental impact of raw materials. Not all materials are easily recycled, and processing recyclable into the correct waste stream requires considerable energy. Some particular manufactured goods are not easily separated, unless specially process therefore have unique product-based recycling processes.

Products made from a variety of materials can be recycled using a number of processes.

Resource recovery is using wastes as an input material to create valuable products as new outputs. The aim is to reduce the amount of waste generated, thereby reducing the need for landfill space, and optimising the values created from waste. Resource recovery delays the need to use raw materials in the manufacturing process. Materials found in municipal solid waste, construction and demolition waste, commercial waste and industrial wastes can be used to recover resources for the manufacturing of new materials and products. Plastic, paper, aluminium, glass and metal are examples of where value can be found in waste.

An eddy current separator (ECS) is a machine that uses a powerful magnetic field to separate non-ferrous metals from an input waste or ore stream. The device makes use of eddy currents to effect the separation. Non-ferrous metals typically separated by an ECS include aluminum, copper and die-cast metals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MBA Polymers</span>

MBA Polymers is a recycling company with operations globally that recovers plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and auto-shredder residue from end-of-life automobiles (ELV).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appliance recycling</span> Process of dismantling scrapped home appliance for reuse

Appliance recycling is the process of dismantling scrapped home appliances to recover their parts or materials for reuse. Recycling appliances for their original or other purposes, involves disassembly, removal of hazardous components and destruction of the equipment to recover materials, generally by shredding, sorting and grading. The rate at which appliances are discarded has increased due in part to obsolescence due to technological advancement, and in part to not being designed to be repairable. The main types of appliances that are recycled are televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, and computers. When appliances are recycled, they can be looked upon as a valuable resources; if disposed of improperly, they can be environmentally harmful and poison ecosystems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recycling in Australia</span> Method of waste management in Australia

Recycling in Australia is a widespread, and comprehensive part of waste management in Australia, with 60% of all waste collected being recycled. Recycling is collected from households, commercial businesses, industries and construction. Despite its prominence, household recycling makes up only a small part (13%) of Australia's total recycling. It generally occurs through kerbside recycling collections such as the commingled recycling bin and food/garden organics recycling bin, drop-off and take-back programs, and various other schemes. Collection and management of household recycling typically falls to local councils, with private contractors collecting commercial, industrial and construction recycling. In addition to local council regulations, legislation and overarching policies are implemented and managed by the state and federal governments.

Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility is a recycling facility at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, United States. Operated by Sims Municipal Recycling, it was designed by Annabelle Selldorf, and its construction involved the use of a variety of recycled materials. The campus contains several structures, including an education center and New York City's first commercial-scale wind turbine. As of January 2022, it is the largest commingled recycling facility in the United States and the primary recycling center in New York City.

References

  1. ↑ waste sorting and recycling system
  2. ↑ "Sortation by the numbers". Resource Recycling News. 2018-10-01. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  3. ↑ "Recycling Facilities in the US". www.ibisworld.com. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  4. ↑ "No lightweights". Recycling Today. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  5. 1 2 "NERC survey offers insight into today's MRF economics". Resource Recycling News. 2019-08-27. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  6. ↑ "OCC hits new lows". Recycling Today. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  7. ↑ "Companies plan investments in US recycled paper mills". Resource Recycling News. 2019-08-13. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  8. ↑ "Glass is costing MRFs $150 million annually". Resource Recycling News. 2017-04-20. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  9. ↑ "Busting myths about glass recycling". Recycling Today. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  10. ↑ Petrova, Lori Ioannou, Magdalena (2019-07-27). "America is drowning in garbage. Now robots are being put on duty to help solve the recycling crisis". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-08-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Waldrop, M. Mitchell (2020-10-01). "Recycling meets reality". Knowable Magazine. doi: 10.1146/knowable-092920-1 . S2CID   224901411.
  12. ↑ Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, Inc., American Chemistry Council, (2015) The Evolution of Mixed Waste Processing Facilities 1970-Today
  13. ↑ ArrowBio Process Finstein, M. S., Zadik, Y., Marshall, A. T. & Brody, D. (2004) The ArrowBio Process for Mixed Municipal Solid Waste – Responses to “Requests for Information”, Proceedings for Biodegradable and Residual Waste Management, Proceedings. (Eds. E. K. Papadimitriou & E. I. Stentiford), Technology and Service Providers Forum, p. 407-413
  14. ↑ Miller, Chaz (June 2017). "Chaz Miller - Onto the next stage". Northeast Recycling Council. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  15. ↑ Mastermind of the MRF Logsdon, Gene. BioCycle. Emmaus: Apr 1993. Vol. 34, Iss. 4; pg. 49, ff.
  16. ↑ "What is a Materials Recovery Facility". Green and Blue Waste Solutions. Retrieved 2024-01-24.
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