Area Disposal completes MRF retrofit

After a two-month construction and installation period, Pekin, Illinois-based Area Disposal Service unveiled its new state-of-the-art sorting equipment and facility upgrades at an open house June 6.

Owner of Area Recycling, Peoria Disposal Co. (PDC) is a family-owned business with more than 90 years in the waste and recycling industry. The facility expansion and equipment upgrades represent a $3.5 million investment, the company says in a news release announcing the material recovery facility (MRF) retrofit.

“The recycling industry is at a critical point in its history and the value of recycling material is at a historic low,” says Matt Coulter, PDC vice president. “This new sort system produces a purer recycled commodity and it does it four times as fast as the old equipment. Adding value to our end product is one way to reinvigorate recycling.”

The sorting equipment system was built and installed by Quebec-based Machinex. The company says it designed the current system to process 12 tons per hour of single-stream residential recycling, but the system can be “easily upgraded” to process 18 tons per hour.

The system’s new front-end design includes with a MACH Triple Deck old corrugated container (OCC) screen to reduce wrapping and improve cardboard recovery, as well as a MACH ballistic separator that was installed instead of a traditional disc screen to separate the fibers from containers. The ballistic separator solution reduces maintenance for the operator because it has “no exposed shafts for material to wrap around” and there are no rubber discs to replace, the company says.

The system upgrade also includes new metal separation system, including an overbelt magnet for ferrous metals and a Machinex eddy current separator for recovering aluminum cans in the recycling stream.

"Machinex is extremely proud of the results of this project and we are especially pleased with the confidence shown by Area Recycling,” says Chris Hawn, CEO of the Machinex U.S. division. “Our flexibility, our listening and our responsiveness put them in confidence with us and as always we ensured that the design of the system was meeting their needs.”

As part of the retrofit, Area added more than 8,000-square-feet to the Pekin processing facility. The upgraded equipment and expansion also led to the creation of five new jobs and “represents PDC’s commitment to recycling," the company says.

“We made this sizeable investment because we know the recycling industry will survive this downturn,” Coulter says. “Adapting to changing markets and creating a better end product is our vision realized.”