World First Norwegian Recycling & Biogas Facility Wins Innovation Award

German recycling equipment manufacturer, Stadler, has won an award from the German-Norwegian Chamber of Commerce Business Award for its design and manufacture of a fully automated Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) recycling and anaerobic digestion biogas facility in Norway. The plant, which Stadler said is the first of its kind in the world, is located in Oslo, Norway and is capable of processing capacity of 30 tonne of MSW per hour. Completed in just three months, the equipment manufacturer explained that the facility contains 14 NIR optical sorting units, over 300 tonnes of steel and 1300m2 of walkways, covering six floors and reaching 15m in height. According to Stadler, the high level of automation in the plant means that it needs only two operating staff to load the waste and to remove the baled materials. The rest of the operation is monitored and controlled by CCTV. To ensure the plant maintains its efficiency, it relies on the community to sort all of their waste into colour coded bags. Upon receipt at the plant, the NIR units sort according to colour and this is then processed accordingly. Food waste is diverted to an anaerobic digester with the resultant biogas being used to fuel the public transport system. Operated by RoAF, the facility received the Innovation Award at the German-Norwegian Chamber of Commerce Business Awards. Chosen from a field of 12 entrants, the judging panel on the German-Norwegian Chamber of Commerce Business Awards gave the following citation: “With the building of its world first, fully automated mixed household waste plant, STADLER has shown that even the most complicated sorting processes can be undertaken. With this they have shown a real concern for the environment and, at the same time, have made the working conditions for the staff considerably better.” The company added that the design and manufacture and construction of the plant was carried out on time and on budget. The design and commissioning was overseen by Ben Eule, global technical manager with Stadler UK. Read More Sorted: The Comingled Glass Conundrum The use of comingled recycling collections has risen significantly over recent years. For many materials sorting techniques have proved adept at creating high quality recyclates from these collections. But in the case of glass there have been wide variations in the quality and quantity recovered. However, recent PHD research has identified methods to recover increased high quality volumes of glass from mixed recycling. By Ben Eule Veolia’s Australian Landfill-Gas-to-Energy Fish Farm Project Wins Double Award A Veolia project in Australia that is using heat from a landfill gas-to-energy facility at a nearby fish farm, has won two Australian Business Awards - for Innovation and Sustainability. U.S. Air Force Cadet Helps Test Small Scale Anaerobic Digestion Food Waste System A U.S. Air Force Academy cadet has been working alongside scientists at Tyndall Air Force Base in n Colorado Springs to turn food waste into methane gas using a small scale anaerobic digester.