Tomra Sorting boosts paper recovery at Ireland's largest household recycling facility
Cutting-edge sensor-based sorting technology from TOMRA Sorting has been deployed to boost paper recovery at Ireland’s largest household recycling facility. Five TOMRA AUTOSORT units were installed as part of a recent £2.9 million upgrade at the plant, which is operated by Irish Packaging Recycling (IPR), part of the Beauparc Utility Group.
The state-of-the art regional MRF in Ballymount, Dublin, is the largest of its kind in Ireland and processes 20 tonnes per hour of household dry recycling material from approximately 400,000 homes in Dublin and the surrounding areas.
Material is separated into its constituent parts: two paper grades, cardboard, aluminium, steel and five grades of plastic. Recovered materials are formed into bales which IPR sells to markets around the world.
The upgrade project, which was managed by IPR’s chosen main contractor, McDonald International, included the installation of 37 new conveyors, five TOMRA optical separators, one Nihot density separator, three paper picking cabins, a complete overhaul of the existing electrical and controls system, upgrading the existing plant control interface and integrating old and new controls into a single system.
TOMRA equipment installed at IPR’s Ballymount MRF includes five TOMRA units on the paper line – one AUTOSORT unit on the news and PAMs line and three on the mixed paper grades line. A fifth TOMRA AUTOSORT is used for fibre recovery to reduce the plant’s waste.
By introducing TOMRA equipment the plant is now able to run at 20 tonnes per hour (an increase from 16.5 tonnes per hour) and achieve 98.3 per cent purity on the paper grade before the material is handpicked in one of the three new paper picking cabins. IPR is now benefitting from greater efficiencies, reduced labour costs and paper that is far cleaner than before.
Liam Dunne, MRF General Manager at the IPR-operated MRF, comments: “Our goal was to get below 2 per cent contamination and we’re currently at 1.7 per cent and that’s before our trained operators pick out any contamination remaining from our three new QC cabins. This has enabled us to increase the number of outlets we export to, but the main thing for us as a business is that as the markets for paper closed and the material becomes harder to move, we’re now in a much stronger position to be the last operator in Ireland to be stopped.
“TOMRA’s equipment has enabled us to increase plant capacity and throughout as well as upgrade our paper by reducing contamination. As a result our paper is now one of the cleanest in the country. What’s more, thanks to the addition of a fifth TOMRA AUTOSORT which recovers fibres from plant waste, we’ve reduced our plant waste by 4 per cent.”
Gavin Russell, Sales Engineer at TOMRA Sorting, adds: “IPR’s plant is a great example of what automation can achieve when backed by close collaboration between supplier and customer.”