IE20010276A1 - Total msw recovery facility including power generation capabilities - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention is addressed to an apparatus and method (process) for carrying out effective sorting, separation and classification of un-processed MSW into fractions which will improve efficiency of current waste management. This improved efficiency is achieved inter alia through the use of various separation and power generation devices designed to segregate fractions of Municipal Household (Solid) Waste based on their potential reusable possibilities. Through the utilization of such devices optimized to categorize by the physical properties, a large percentage of the sort, separate classify and power generation process is achieved without the use of human sorters thereby eliminating a high proportion of man hour involvement along with the associated hazards of handling MSW in the overall process.

Description

1. Floor Sort Material from the facility yard is brought in by front end loaders. This is the first sort. Overly large or HAZMAT materials are identified and rejected from the floor. Depending on the specific material and the protocols established, HAZMAT is either incinerated on-site or shipped to an appropriate facility. Washdown from the floor is sent to the incinerator due to trace contaminates. The “overs” will be identified for further processing. Some items, such as radiators, scrap metal, PVC piping are readily identified and can be placed in appropriate bins. Others, such as wood, bundled items, etc. will require some form of chipping or grinding to be processed. 2. Infeed Conveyors.

Transports material from the tipping floor. 3. Pre-Sort Conveyors.

Receives material from the Infeed Conveyors onto a steel pan conveyor. Up to four inspectors (one on each side of two conveyors) reject items such as propane cylinders, paint cans, consumer electronics, furniture, cables, etc. These materials will be rejecting into chutes and join the material rejected in Item 1, Floor Sort. 4. Bag Breakers.

The material stream will fall onto the bag breakers, designed to break open bags with a standard efficiency of 90% while minimize shredding. This will release the contents into the material stream for subsequent sorting.

. Transfer Conveyors.

The material will fall onto transfer conveyors. A bag removal system will be installed on each side of the conveyors to improve the Trommel Screen efficiency.

F_ MSW_ Trommel_ Processing: The material will fall onto the MSW Trommel. If bags are still not open, they will be opened by bolt-on bag spikes. The efficiency of the trommel to correctly screen the material will be driven by the effectiveness of the pre-sorting and bag removal.

The first screening will feature a 2” size holes. This size of material will be transported by conveyor to Item #8, Mechanical Sorting Line. The next second screening will feature 6” holes, resulting in a 2” to 6” size stream. This material will drop onto a conveyor and go to the “Unders” Primary Sort Station. The material larger than 6” will transfer to the “Overs” Primary Sort Station.

Kemper Imageering, Inc.

Process Description, p.2 7. Primary Sort Conveyor.

The “Unders” (2” to 6”) and “Overs” (6”-r) will each be on their own Primary Sort Conveyors. Up to 60 personnel will be stationed at each conveyor to manually extract recyclable material from the stream and place into chutes to storage bins. Up to eleven separate types of materials can be accommodated. The material removed by the sorters and the number of sorters will be adjusted to suite the waste composition and the current market needs. Typical materials removed at these stations are: OCC (Old Corrugated Cardboard); ONP (Old News Print); CPO (Computer Printout); Boxboard; Mixed Paper; PET (Polyurethane Plastics); HDPE (High Density Polyurethane Plastics) ; FE (Ferrous metals); AL (Aluminum metals); Glass (Flint, Green, Amber), and others. The material., in the bins will be collected until there is sufficient quantity for processing and sale.

Note: This is the primary sorting point for recovering plastics. The plastics will be processed outside of this line by a system similar to the Polymer Recovery System equipment included in the KI June 7, 1999 brief, where the plastics will be sorted, chipped, and prepared for sale to a pelletizing facility. The heavier unrecovered plastics remaining in this stream, primarily in shards, will be incinerated while the lighter plastics will be processed through the Syn-Gas system. 8, _Mechanical_Sorting_Line.

All sizes of materials will go through a mechanical sorting line. At this point, the “Unders” line will be merged with the 2” and Under material. The “Overs” lines will have its own line to accommodate volume and size issues. 8A. Magnetic Separator.

An overhead magnetic separator will remove ferrous material. This separator will be of the self-cleaning electro suspended type, with crossbelt, mounting perpendicular to the sorting conveyors in the Mechanical Sorting Line. Ferrous items will be dropped into a bunker for transport to the appropriate bin. : ι < L·rt 8B. Eddy Current Separators.

Unlike magnetic separators, which “pulls” material, this separator “pushes” nonferrous metals, primarily aluminum, out of the stream. This is a change from the CPM plan, which currently does not include this type of equipment. However, CPM’s baler has been omitted from this plan as it was not needed, creating a budgetary balance. - 8C. Finger Screen This equipment combines vibratory scalping/screening action with a waterfall rollover effect. Trapped contaminants are removed without excess crosscontamination or fluffing material into unmanageable volumes. It spreads and decompacts incoming material, then loosens and sorts it without plugging or trapping, creating a cost-effective separation with a minimum of labor or material degradation. The main goal of this equipment is to remove mixed broken glass from the stream.

Kemper Imageering, Inc.

Process Description, p.3 9. Grinder.

At this point the majority of the material stream should be “soft” material, primarily organics and recyclables such as paper and plastic too small or too commingled to be effectively removed. However, there should still be a significant portion of other material types in the stream that prevents the stream from being used “as is.” The material coming from the “Overs” line will go through a double grinding system to reduce it to 1.5” and smaller. The “Unders” line will go through a single grinding system to reduced it to the same size. Both streams will then go to the Water Sort by conveyor.

. Water Sort, Using a float tank system, all material heavier than water (Specific Gravity > 1.0) will sink to the bottom to be extracted by a slanted conveyor and sent to the incinerator to reduce its volume. The lighter material (Specific Gravity < 1.0) will be extracted by a top-side auger suitable for slurries and dropped onto a conveyor for de-watering en route to Item #11, Destoner. The top skim of the fluid can also be diverted to the Syn-Gas generators, as this will be rich in residue oils and other material that can be effectively reduced to methane. This float system is similar to the system depicted in the Polymer Recovery Systems process. It is possible to use an additive to increase the tank’s specific gravity to greater than 1.0, decreasing the amount of material incinerated and increasing the amount otherwise recovered. 11. Destoner.

Particulates such as glass and metals will rapidly erode the piping within the Syn-Gas Process and must be removed. Similarly, these particulates are also undesirable in a composted product. The Destoner fluidizes and sorts the remaining material, removing the last such particulates. From here, the material is sent to the Syn-Gas/Composting station. It is likely the “cream” of this final sort will be earmarked for the Syn-Gas while the remainder goes to Composting. 12. Syn-Gas/Composting.

The Syn-Gas Generation Process, as a single skid-mounted system, currently benchmarks 3,000 lbs-mass/hr with a 45% moisture content to produce llMMbtu/hr of cool syngas. This is sufficient to generate at least 1MW of electricity with modern equipment. This process can be increased by adding modules or by scaling up the system with custom design. Because this system works best with a steady optimum feedstock flow, it would be prudent to undersize the syngas generation feedstock and use the overage for composting. This would assure a steady, reliable syngas generation and still have a useful secondary product for market. This completes the process line.

Note: In a related issue, the heat generated in the incinerator can be used to provide steam for the facility and electrical co-generation for the facility as well as sales back to the local grid. No hard data is available since the specifics are driven by the process/mass balance flow, which cannot be completed until detail engineering begins.

Claims (10)

1. Document Claims

1. A method of separating .sorting and classifying un-processed MSW comprising one or more of glass containers or non ferrous containers, ferrous materials, paper based products and polymer based materials , and a remainder into a plurality of fractions which comprises a filtered , upwardly traveling conveyor at such an inclination with respect to horizontal; and having flites of a height ; effective for said containers and materials to gravitate down and off said conveyor; depositing said part-processed MSW onto said upwardly traveling filtered conveyor utilizing a combination of floor sorting leading to infeed conveyors, pre-sort conveyors, bag breakers ; transfer conveyors ; magnetic separation, eddy current separation, finger screening , grinders,........ water sort of heavy material comprising a ( specific gravity > 1.0 ) and lighter material comprising a ( specific gravity < 1.0 ); destoner for the removal of larger , un-desirable particles before said remaining organic material is conveyed to steam (thermal based) pyrolysis unit to manufacture synthetic methane gas; which is then conveyed to gas powered electrical generator for generation of electricity.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said inclination with respect to the horizontal of said flited; upwardly traveling conveyor is provided to be from 50 Degrees to 70 Degrees.

3. The method of claim 1 which includes the step of magnetically ‘Collecting’ and ‘Pushing’ ferrous and non-ferrous metals employing a magnetic separator on conveyor and eddy current separator on conveyor

4. A method for separating un-processed MSW into fractions which comprises the steps of: (S) .......' removing oversized, bulky and potential HAZMAT materials from initial feed by way of manual · floor sort; (b) by way of in-feed conveyors, transport remaining material from tipping floor as (a); (c) by way of pre-sort conveyor, further part manual sort is required to remove items such asqjaint- cans, consumer electronics etc with remainder going to : (d) bag breakers are designed to open bags with a standard efficiency of 90% while minimizing shredding, contents subsequently released for subsequent sorting; (e) further transfer conveyors will remove trash/rubbish bags still in stream in order to improve Trommel efficiency; (f) material will fall onto trommel line with all un-opened bags state being opened by way of bolt-on bag spikes (g) first screening is in respect of 2” holes, this size of material will be transported by conveyor to Item 8 , mechanical sorting line ; (h) second screening in respect of holes 6”, resulting in a 2” to 6” size stream with this -materials being diverted to “Unders “ primary sort station, with materials being larger than 6” being diverted to Overs’ primary sort station ; (i) primary sort conveyor will process “Unders” and “Overs” removing materials such as OCC ( Old Corrugated Cardboard ) , ONP ( Old News Print), CPO ( Computer Printout), Boxbaord, Mixed Paper, PET ( Polyurethane Plastics ); HDPE ( High Density Polyurethane Plastics ), FE ( Ferrous Metals ), AL ( Aluminum Metals ) , Glass ( Flint, Green, Amber), (j) such materials will be stored until there are sufficient quantities for resale.

5. The method of claim 4 involves further sorting point for the recovery of plastics and other polymer based materials.

6. The method of claim 4 involves inclusion of a mechanical sorting line into the process flow incorporating ; (a) Magnetic separator which will remove all ferrous materials; this separator will be of the self cleaning electro suspended type, with crossbelt mounting perpendicular to the sorting conveyors in the Mechanical Sorting Line; (al) ferrous materials and items will be dropped into a bunker for transport to the appropriate bin. (b) eddy separator which is unlike magnetic separator; (bl) This separator will be included to “Push” non ferrous metals mainly consisting of aluminum cans etc from the stream. (c) Finger screen screening combines vibratory/screening action with a waterfall rollover effect (cl) trapped contaminants are removed without cross contamination or fluffing material into unmanageable volumes; (c2) spreads and de-compacts incoming materials and loosens and sorts without plugging or trapping primarily for the removal of mixed broken glass from the stream.

7. The method of claim 4 wherein step 2 involves inclination of upward traveling conveyor from 50 Degrees to 70 Degrees includes the addition of a grinder to further process “Overs” and reduce it to a size of 1.5” and smaller.

8. The method of claim 4 wherein the part processed MSW is subject to water sort using a float tank system where all heavy material heavier than water ( specific gravity >1.0) will sink to bottom of tank and be extracted by slanted conveyor at an inclination of 45 degrees to reduce content volume either by way of incineration or steam (thermal based) decomposition.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein water float will deposit residue which could cause damage to Syngas/composting.station, this system dewaters the remaining material, then fluidizes' and sorts' this material, removing (destoning) such particles that could cause damage to Syngas/eomposting station; the remaining destoned materials consisting of organic matter is then diverted to syngas generation process as feedstock. Stockpiled feedstock can be composted, which, does. not. affect., feedstock quality but does insure an alternative method for processed organic waste to be disposed of in a prompt, environmentally sound and profitable manner.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein syngas generation process is a single skid mounted system , currently benchmarking 3,000 Ibs-mass/hr with a 45% moisture content to produce 1 IMmbtu/hr of cool syngas compressed from 16 to 20 bar pressure which is producing up to I MW of electricity with appropriate equipment.