Powerscreen Pegson lives up to its reputation

• 
• 1st February 2008
• Recycling
 

Powerscreen Pegson Equipment, the distributor for Powerscreen and Terex Pegson Machinery in the UK, has teamed up with LJH/DUO Group to supply and install a new recycling system for Brian Plant at one of the skip hire company's Grimsby sites, for the processing and sorting of saleable materials from C&D and skip waste. The new plant is using one of Powerscreen's mid-range trommels and a two-bay picking station.

Over the last 15 years Brian Plant has developed its plant hire, haulage, contract earthworks business, building a fleet of diggers and lorries for the excavation and transportation of earthworks. During this time the company established a quarry that produces stone located near Scunthorpe and two recycling yards - one of these also being in Scunthorpe, the other situated in Grimsby - for the storing, crushing and recycling and onward distribution of hardcore and topsoils.

Four years ago Brian Plant started a Skip Hire business that fitted naturally into its overall business development. The company also acquired a waste transfer station on Grimsby Docks, which was slightly different to its other recycling sites in that it was a licensed waste transfer station. This allows the company to transfer household, domestic and commercial waste as opposed to inert materials such as concrete, rubble and soils.

The skips Brian Plant hires out to the local public arrive at the Grimsby Waste Transfer Centre from the surrounding area containing household, commercial and construction mixed waste. To improve the quality of the saleable material being recycled and the efficiency of the processing Brian Plant soon decided it was time to switch from semi-manual sorting of this waste to a mechanical solution.

The company's owner, Clive Thornley began making enquiries into an appropriate system, already knowing that a trommel would be the right kit for the job.

"That's what attracted us to Powerscreen Pegson," he says. "There were a number of manufacturers I considered but it was clear that Powerscreen was top of the tree as far as trommels were concerned.

Approaching its second year of business, Powerscreen Pegson Equipment is one of the newest dealers of Powerscreen equipment. Operating within a designated area within the north midlands and the north east, the company's Alfreton base in Derbyshire is within 2 hours of any customer within its territory. The company supplies the full range of Terex Pegson Crushing and Powerscreen Dry Screening Equipment.

"When it became apparent that they could also provide a picking line, basically incorporating a series of conveyor belts, magnets and blowers, what began with a trommel led to us deciding to go with Powerscreen Pegson for the whole system," says Clive.

"They convinced me that their solution was the right system to do the job correctly and offered long term reliability. During the design phase we discussed our requirements with Powerscreen Pegson who came up with various schemes and then decided on the best way of doing it. They have the ability and knowledge to do that," says Clive.

With the system just installed, the major benefit for Brian Plant is a much more efficient method of sorting the constituent waste and a much safer method too. The company will save a lot of time and effort compared to sorting by hand. Previously the operation couldn't get a truly clean product and operatives were just picking out what they could, everything else was going to landfill.

"Our staff were bending over on the floor to sort the waste by hand," says Clive. "The new system, however, incorporates a picking conveyor belt at waste height that allows our staff to stand over it as if they were next to a kitchen table and pick material as it passes by, simply pulling off what they need."

Sorting out the mixed waste
Brian Plant's waste sorting system has been designed by Powerscreen Pegson to handle commercial and domestic skip waste, providing some pre-sorting is carried out.

Mixed waste arrives in anything from a 4 to a 10 yard skip. The full skips are tipped onto the ground and the mixed waste is pre-sorted to pick out any large items prior to the material going into the trommel. Powerscreen's trommel, which is available in a range of different sizes to meet the requirements of the operation, is located at the feed end of Brian Plant's new system, where the material is dropped into the drum.

For this application the Powerscreen trommel, which has a 30 mm punchplate for extra strength, has been fitted with a dust canopy over its top to minimise dust. A radial belt stockpiler that removes the fines and gives a maximum stockpile height that can be moved accordingly to gain even more stockpile room without having to handle it all the time with a shovel.

The trommel screens out 30 mm material - soil and fines. The rest of the material from the skip waste is passed onto an incline belt. The heavy-duty stringer type construction conveys material from the trommel discharge conveyor to the picking station.

Before reaching the picking station the material passes a blower that blows out the light material into a lights cage for collection. The blower - a centrifugal fan - is mounted to a fully machined EN8 shaft and runs on plummer block bearing units.

The airknife is situated above the head drum of the feed conveyor to enable separation of heavy and light materials whilst they are in free fall. A manually adjustable damper fitted to the air duct is used to regulate the airknife pressure. Most of the oversize lightweight material is mechanically separated by blowing into a 40 yard lights cage.

The remaining material then passes onto another belt conveyor where an Eriez overband magnet fitted on the picking belt, complete with stainless steel chute pulls off the ferrous metals.

It's then into the picking station, which allows manual selection and rejection of particular materials not required in the end product leaving clean hardcore to come out at the end of the picking station, for Brian Plant to supply to its market. Material picked out - such as paper, copper, wood, plastics etc - is held for recycling.

The picking station is a heavy-duty, fully welded lattice gantry construction to minimise the amount of support legs required in the skip area. The picking belt is fitted with an operator's cabin over picking section. A 1200 mm width picking belt is fitted with two picking stations each side. At the feed section the belt is supported on rubber impact bars complete with a low friction running surface.

Access is provided to both sides of the picking section by means of 800 mm wide platforms constructed from durbar pattern floor plates and galvanised tubular handrails and standards.

"The new plant from Powerscreen Pegson enables us to sort more efficiently, particularly when it comes to getting the fines out of the material," says Clive. "This is where the trommel comes in because the fines tend to be quite heavy and removing that sort of material enables us to dispose of the fines in an inert landfill sites or even reuse it as soils and hardcore. There is also the benefit of reducing the weight of the other materials for disposal and consequently reducing the amount and cost of what goes to landfill while allowing plastic, wood, paper, etc to be recycled for the markets that we have identified for these recycled products. The material has to be of good quality - you never know what you are going to get in a skip. We can now exploit those markets as opposed to having to send the material to landfill.

Brian Plant expects to increase throughputs by the order of 50%. "But," concludes Clive, "the main aspect is to improve the quality of the basic materials such that we can reduce the disposal costs of those materials."

Powerscreen Pegson Equipment Ltd
Whites Close,
Alfreton Trading Estate
Alfreton
Derbyshire
DE55 7RB
UK

T: 01773 603080
F: 01773 605070
http://www.powerscreenpegson.com/

Associated Links

• Hub-4 Profile of Powerscreen Pegson Equipment Ltd
• Powerscreen Pegson Equipment Ltd Company Website