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A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier

Sunday, December 9, 2018

We’re back! Did you miss us? Don’t answer that.

The computer was down for a while and you know how dependent many of us have become on the computer – as well as the web to do research.

Found what we thought was a rather interesting article from a Resource Recycling newsletter. It was titled “Waste-to-fuel company readies U.S. facilities.”

“A company billing its technology as a landfill alternative is scaling up to create a solid recovered fuel from otherwise disposal-bound material.”

Using technology developed by an Italian company, it is constructing plants in West Virginia and New York. It owns the exclusive rights to use the technology in 11 states in the northeast.

It uses municipal solid waste (MSW), which will be delivered to the facilities by collection trucks. This waste will go through several processes to become a product the company refers to as a "Solid Recovered Fuel.” This fuel, approved by the EPA, will be primarily used as a supplement to coal in cement kilns. With several cement kilns in our area, hopefully such plants will also come to Central Texas in the future to use some of our MSW.

“It really is a very simple process. The facilities use mechanical biological treatment, followed by mechanical refinement using screens, air classifiers, magnets and eddy current separators, a near infrared optical sorting system and shredding,” a spokesperson for the company said.

These steps are required to remove contaminants from the material and thus provide the necessary refining to meet their customers' needs.

Of course, the whole process is aimed at the non-recyclable material. The spokesperson stressed that the company’s facilities operate off a straight garbage stream, separate from the recycling stream. He added, “We’re not promoting taking recyclables out of the recycling stream.”

Of course, if there are recyclables in the material received, they are removed. This is done before the material goes to the shredder, which breaks the material into two different sizes. Then, at the end of the several additional processes, the fuel is in a "fluff" form, ready for delivery to kilns.

Of the MSW received, 42 to 47 percent of it will become solid recovered fuel. Another 30 to 35 percent of the weight is moisture that evaporates during processing, and 17 to 20 percent is fines and inert materials that need to be sent for disposal or potentially for use as alternative daily cover. A final 3 to 5 percent is made up of recovered metals, PVC and other materials.

This means through this technology, roughly 80 percent won’t go to a landfill. Since the West Virginia plant will have a capacity of 110,000 tons a year and the New York plant is designed for 150,000 tons a year, this is no small amount to be kept out of the landfills. Plans are for the future plants to have the largest capacity.

Till next week, do have an enjoyable and safe one.

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Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432 or e-mail omaier@txstate.edu.

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666