The company has teamed up with Swedish equipment manufacturers MRT Systems to use Lampcare's London site to demonstrate, develop and test new equipment. MRT has already supplied Lampcare with new equipment at both its London and Glasgow sites.
Commenting on the project, Keith Patterson, sales and marketing director at Lampcare said: “We are the first company in the UK who has the ability to recycle every type of lamp and recover both the sodium and mercury ourselves.”
Lampcare is installing a recycling plant for low pressure sodium lamps at their London site to compliment two existing sodium lamp recycling plants. They also plan to add an “end cut” technology plant manufactured by MRT which will be capable of recycling 5,000 lamps per hour. End cut technology allows a recycler to easily recover both glass and phosphor powder by removing the lead, which can damage machinery during recycling, from the end of the tube.
Mr Patterson said: “The plant is able to provide a greater level of recycling and removing much of the contamination of the by products found in current methods.”
Lampcare has invested in a new triple batch distillation unit from MRT and they will be installing this in the near future. Called the ECM 5000, it will remove the contaminated lead products from collected glass and also separate the phosphor powder.
Following amendments to the hazardous waste regulations in July this year and the imminent implementation of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive fluorescent tubes will need to be recycled at a much higher rate than at present.
The UK legislation is thought to cover covers over 100 million lamps, 45 million linear fluorescent tubes, 49 million compact fluorescents, four million HID lamps and two million sodium lamps.
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