Work at North West Recycling near Carlisle includes the processing of material for RDF and SRF
While the company has already achieved several sales of the unit in the UK, its domestic supplier Mach Tech took the opportunity to present the machine to visitors from across the UK at what it dubbed the ‘official launch’.
Mach Tech itself is based in Littleborough near Rochdale, and is a specialised engineering company servicing shredding equipment and also supplying Linder shredders, Colin Irons, sales manager for Mach Tech explained to guests on the day. And, he thanked North West Recycling, which uses a Polaris machine, for allowing the visitors to see it working.
Mr Irons said that Mach Tech is “proud that we can service any machine in the marketplace but we also supply shredders which are manufactured by Linder Recyclingtech which is based in Spittal, in the south of Austria.”
Size reduction
He explained that: “In the field of alternative fuel processing, both for SRF and RDF, MachTech/Lindner is very pleased to be supplying the Polaris machine for secondary size reduction to full systems including pre-shredding, conveyance, separation and secondary shredding”.
The Polaris machine is the latest product from the company and is targeted at producing fuels with a size of 50-100mm.
As a one step hybrid machine, the Polaris offers a number of advantages for the processor, claimed Mr Irons. In terms of the Linder range, “It has the stability of a Jupiter primary shredder with the throughput of a Komet secondary shredder”, he said. “Polaris also has a very high torque and shredding power as well as a safety clutch to cope with untreated waste”.
And, he added that it features “a stronger cutting and screen unit to withstand the additional force.”
Direct feeding
The machine also has a larger in-feed hopper storage for direct feeding and a “simple and light screen change” for variable fraction size. The power developed by the two stage belt drive is described as equivalent to a flywheel mass of 11 tonnes.
Throughput per hour ranges from 8-32 tonnes of untreated and commercial and industrial waste and is shredded by standardised cutting tools that also act as static knives/counter knives and scrapers. All have four cutting sides and are interchangeable with each other. Gapping to reduce the distance between cutter and counter knife is done from outside the machine via a simple process called gapping.
Video shows retrieval of foreign object from shredder with minimal waste loss
Throughput
Throughput of the machine at North West Recycling is about 16 tonnes per hour and one notable feature shown on the open day is not so much just that it will stop on an unshreddable item, which it does, but also that the access and design of the shredder means little waste falls out when the item is removed via the hydraulic maintenance door. Only a small volume of material falls out as the waste is pushed up and out of the way.
At the ‘launch’ event, a piece of steel was placed in a load which subsequently caused it to stop with the clutch activated and the drive disengaged. The piece of ‘tramp’ material was very simply removed with little to no mess on the floor.
This process is helped by the clutch which is one of the special features of the machine and is said to be able to disconnect from the main drive “instantaneously” thanks to being torque-limiting.
Linder now has several Polaris machines in the UK including at a site in Hull and more recently at Wheeldon’s Waste in Ramsbottom, Lancashire.
For Lindner, the Polaris is seen as important for the UK largely because of the continuing demand, mainly from northern Europe, for RDF and SRF produced in the UK for energy from waste and cement plants.
* The company’s Uracco mobile shredder was also on display, usable for a range of materials such as tyres, wood and mattresses. The Uracco boasts the ability to separate flock from the ferrous content of the mattresses at between 110-130 mattresses per hour, said Mr Irons.
Subscribe for free