Installation work is underway at the Isle of Wight Council’s (IWC) new recycling and waste treatment park on the Island.
The site will be operated on a day-to-day basis by Amey in partnership with the IWC and includes mechanical treatment facility (MRF) to sort and grade mixed recycling and also to extract recyclable materials from black bag waste, as well as an energy recovery facility (ERF), which will create energy from waste which cannot be recycled.
Carrying out the installation of the sorting machines in the MRF is Stadler Engineering, which has designed the facility to cater for local authority collected waste (LACW) and commercial and industrial (C&I). With an annual throughput of 80,000 tonnes, the site is considered a major part of the IWC’s goal to divert 90% of waste away from landfill by 2020.
The hybrid mechanical pre-treatment line has two operational modes subject to whether it is processing recyclate materials or black bag waste. Recycling material received at the MRF will be processed at a throughput of 10 tonnes per hour, producing paper and card, glass, different plastics and metals.
Dr. Benjamin Eule, Director at Stadler – “The new Isle of Wight facility will play a critical role in helping the IWC and Amey meet impressive recycling targets by 2020. Our state-of-the-art technology will deliver impressive results to the wider community.”
Clean paper and cardboard will be baled on site and sent directly to paper mills. Separately collected food waste will be taken from Forest Road to an Anaerobic Digester to be turned into compost and energy. Clean recycling separated by residents produces a high-quality resource that is extracted by the plant and then sold onto the re-processing market to be made into new products.
The income from this activity will reduce the cost of the waste contract services to the IWC and reduce the amount of ‘dirty’ plastics that are harder to find re-processors for.
Black bag waste received at the MRF on Forest Road will be processed at a throughput of 25 tonnes of hour, fed into a bag splitter before passing through trommel screens, ballistic separators, air separators and optical sorters to separate any ‘dirty’ recyclable resources from the black bag waste.
Each stage in the process aims to maximise throughput, increasing recycling yields. Once recyclable fraction has been removed, residual materials will be converted to fuel for to create energy in the ERF. The ERF is capable of recovering 40,000 tonnes of waste every year, generating 23,000 megawatt hours of energy.
Dr. Benjamin Eule, Director at Stadler, played a vital role in previous Stadler installations at other Amey sites including Allerton Waste Recovery Park and Milton Keynes Waste Recovery Park.
He commented: “The new Isle of Wight facility will play a critical role in helping the IWC and Amey meet impressive recycling targets by 2020. Our state-of-the-art technology will deliver impressive results to the wider community.”
Isle of Wight Council Cabinet member for waste management, Councillor Michael Murwill, said: “In partnership with Amey, the Isle of Wight Council is making a capital investment in the creation of this new facility and I’m really looking forward to the MRF opening in the summer next year, and would like to thank Stadler for their hard work so far.
“This site is key to delivering the contract requirement to divert from landfill 90 per cent of all contract waste by 2020. It is the council’s strategy to lead the country by aiming to achieve zero non-essential waste to landfill by 2025”.
Oriol Sabater, Construction Director for Amey, added: “We have been working very closely with Stadler, the other contractors and the council through all phases of the construction of the new plant. The facility and its state-of-the-art technologies will play a key role in helping the Isle of Wight waste less and recycle more.”
