New MRF in Merthyr Tydfil to Handle 5000 TPA of Household Recycling : Middleton Engineering’s Turnkey Solution for Small Scale Welsh Recycling Facility

Glastonbury, UK based recycling equipment manufacturer, Middleton Engineering, has completed a new 5000 tonne per year Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) for Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council.

The facility has been developed to support the council’s new kerbside recycling strategy, and is expected to handle up to 1 tonne of household waste per hour.

According to Middleton, the turnkey solution covered all aspects of design, construction, commissioning and training at the Council’s site in Pentrebach, included a building extension and civil works to house in-floor sections of the sorting system.

The company said that it also included external storage silos for incoming collections with push through access to the feed conveyors, an elevated sorting solution, storage bays for sorted materials and a fully automatic ME2R80 Twin Ram baler, for baling multiple waste streams.

The raised sorting system is designed to handle 1000kg of mixed household plastics and metal waste per hour, and is said to incorporate a series of bespoke feed conveyors including an in-floor section to facilitate loading, together with variable belt speed control and TV monitoring.

The system also Includes an overband magnetic separator, followed by an eddy current separator, to remove ferrous and then non-ferrous metals, together with a bottle perforator.

“With new waste recycling targets across the whole of Wales, our new MRF at Pentrebach is crucial to supporting Merthyr Tydfil’s kerbside recycling strategy and minimising waste to landfill,” commented Paul Davies, waste operations manager at Merthyr Tydfil.

According to Middleton the sorting solution has been designed to produce high quality recyclate with very low contamination, 1% or less for ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and a minimum requirement of two manual pickers to remove oversize and unwanted materials, prior to the automatic sorting area.

The company added that the elimination of the need for a picking station and a raised cabin has reduced costs and reduces the risk of operators working at height.

Variable speed controls and interlinks were said to enable the whole system to work together, speeding up or slowing down depending on the density rate of product being processed.

The company added that set heights between conveyors creates a ‘waterfall’ effect ensuring material stays at a manageable single tier level. This prevents cross contamination when product is pulled, or forced, off the belts by the separation devices.

The individual sorted waste streams, including paper and card which arrives at the site pre-sorted and is stored in a separate stand-alone bay, are then compacted and baled using the Middleton designed and fabricated Twin Ram baler.

This is said to produce uniform, easy to handle and transport baled waste, ready for sale and onward shipping to individual processors.

“Taking on board the council’s requirements, we provided a solution that focuses on minimising vehicle movements, to produce an efficient separation and baling system within quite a small footprint,” explained Mark Smith, engineering director at Middleton Engineering.

“Our solution also centred on incorporating new industry safety standards to provide ease of maintenance and cleaning with good operator interfaces,” he continued.

“Part of our design criteria is to provide a broad period of training, both in safety and operation, which included hand holding and refresher training plus on-going modem assisted offsite telephone help,” concluded Smith.

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