Major MRF Upgrade Made By Machinex Allows Republic Services Greensboro To Achieve A 95% Runtime

Machinex provided a significant upgrade to the single-stream MRF for Republic Services in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Thanks to the technical team, who continued to serve the customer during this trying time, the sorting plant started up, on time, on April 9^th 2020. The upgrade increases productivity and recovery rates while reducing cleaning times.

Republic Services, who is among the top recycling leaders in the United States, chose to modernize its material recovery facility in Greensboro due to it being nearly 20 years old. Indeed, Greensboro’s municipal contract was renewed, and Republic Services needed to upgrade the equipment to efficiently handle the recyclables. As requested, Machinex designed a single-stream system to process 30 tons/hour of residential & commercial material within the current building while reusing some of the existing structural work and baler feed conveyors.

The system includes a new drum feeder and infeed system, OCC screen, fines screen, three ballistic separators, a glass cleanup system, an optical sorter for PET and HDPE, as well as a new magnet and eddy current separator.

The main processing system is brand new and includes Machinex’ proven, ballistic separators as the primary and secondary screening devices after the OCC and fines screens. No rubber discs are utilized in the entire system. Providing constant and reliable operation, ballistic separators will also minimize aluminum loss because they do not use rubber discs that can wear over time, thus increasing the initial screen opening. Its elliptical movement will also not wrap film or other stringy material, resulting in significantly less maintenance, downtime, and operational costs.

“Before having MACH Ballistic separators, the operator was spending 3 hours per day to clean their disc screens. Since the upgrade, that has been reduced to only 10 to 15 minutes per day. Cleaning screens in MRFs is a big deal because, when you are cleaning screens, you are not producing the material. The upgrade, particularly the MACH Ballistic, helped the customer achieve a 95% runtime”, said Rusty Angel, Eastern Region Sales Manager in the United States.

Additionally, Angel said, “Our client liked our design and appreciated having our U.S. offices about 20 minutes away”.