Outstanding biomass treatment with the QZ - MeWa Recycling ...

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MeWa-International Commissioning: Egbert Tölle, REMONDIS board; Michaela Hinterholzer, Austrian MP; Ernest Gabmann, deputy state governor; Dr Helmut Kolba, managing director UFH RE-cycling; Elmar Kniesel, MeWa assembly manager; Gerhard Jokic, managing director UFH RE-cycling; Juliana Günther, mayor of Kematen (from left to right). Austria leading the way with refrigerator recycling When it comes to environmental protection, Austria is considered a flagship country. The country’s politicians therefore rightly appeared proud at the commissioning of a state-of-the-art refrigerator recycling plant in Kematen near Linz in February 2009. W ith the project in Kematen “We are setting new standards for refrigerator disposal in Europe.“ Both Ernest Gabmann, deputy state governor of Lower Austria and Dr Leopold Zahrer from the Austrian Ministry for the Environment were in agreement on this in the speeches they gave on the occasion of the inauguration of the new plant. At the new waste disposal operation, up to 300,000 refrigerators will be treated each year and 90 tonnes of CFCs gained. The plant’s operation will correspond to a saving to the environment of 900,000 tonnes of CO 2 each year. Use of CFCs was banned in Germany in 1996 when the refrigerant was identified as ozone depletant number 1. Despite this law, the number of CFC refrigerators still in operation throughout Europe is estimated at more than 200 million. This generation of refrigerators is now reaching the recycling plants. “The plant enables CFC and pentane refrigerators to be processed simultaneously without having to be separated beforehand,“ explains MeWa managing director Helmut Oberguggen- berger talking about the plant’s advantages. Besides the extraordinarily high rate of CFCs regained, investors were impressed by the plant’s economic operation and results. With its rotating chains, the MeWa Querstromzerspaner (QZ) exposes the individual fractions from the refrigerators in just one processing step. In doing so, the QZ separates the material compounds of the refrigerators into iron, aluminium, copper and plastic. At the end, the secondary raw materials are fed into containers ready for collection as category 1 cooling waste for sale. “The latest technology enables almost 95 % of all materials from a refrigerator to be regained as raw materials for new products,“ explains Dr Helmut MeWa-News March 2009
Kolba, managing director of the newly founded UFH Recycling GmbH based in Vienna. The future operating company is a joint venture of UFH Holding GmbH, the market leader among Austrian collection and recycling systems and REMONDIS, one of the world’s largest service providers in the area of closed loop recycling management. In an initial step, all recyclable components such as cables and glass deposits are removed. Next, environmentally harmful refrigerators and the compressor oil are drained off by specialists and the compressors are removed from the old refrigerators. The QZ 2000 thereafter processes around 50 to 60 refrigerators MeWa-News March 2009 per hour in an insulated system. The shredded PUR foam is sieved off and free from CFC residue. Environmentally harmful gases are finally cooled down in cryogenic condensation, liquefied then collected in special reservoirs before being disposed of later. After the QZ, mechanical processes separate the iron and other metals and plastics from one another. 30 employees working in three shifts together with state-of-the-art mechanical engineering ensure a high turnover of around 1,000 refrigerators per day. Therefore the entire requirements of the Alpine Republic are covered by the new plant. ■ MeWa-International Homogenous output: Aluminium and copper fraction. The MeWa team has built the refrigerator recycling system in just eight months’ construction time so it is ready for commissioning: Elmar Kniesel, Jens Holzbach, Hans-Gerd Wilke, Mustafa Smailovic, Daniel Treyer, Wilhelm Schöffler (from left to right). Degassing system Stage 1.
Page 1 and 2: NEWS March 2009 Outstanding biomass
Page 3 and 4: Tyre recycling plant in Kazakhstan
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