Austrian environmental engineering contractor, BT-Wolfgang Binder, has completed construction of a new recycling facility for that will turn waste glass into foam glass ballast for Netherlands based GEOCELL.
Foam glass ballast (foam glass granulate) is a high thermal insulating, load dissipating bulk material made from 100% waste glass that combines numerous characteristics, the combination of which provides an excellent insulating material.
According to BT-Wolfgang prior to the new facility being built GEOCELL was purchasing glass powder as raw material, but in order to become independent of the market and suppliers, in 2012 decided to construct its own glass powder production plant - thus securing the supply of raw material.
Operation
The company explained that the new glass powder plant has a discharge rate of 6 tonnes of broken waste glass per hour, and consists of a material store, including raw material discharge, the drying and milling plant, as well as the screening and classifying plant.
Different qualities of waste glass are delivered to the facility and stored intermediately in a covered material store. A wheeled loader is used to move the glass into the discharge hopper.
The material is then transported by conveyors and a belt bucket conveyor into a drum dryer, in which the waste glass is dried to a residual moisture content of less than 0.5%. It is then separated from metals and organic substances in the subsequent processing plant and screened.
The company added that the waste glass with a granularity of 0 to 60 mm is ground in a ball mill to a glass powder final granularity of less than 100 μm.
The material is then directed into the distribution table air separator, in which the glass powder is separated exactly at 100 μm. The finished glass powder product is subsequently intermediately stored in a silo or fed to the foam glass kiln by a pneumatically-operated conveyor system.
Dust is removed from the complete system by a hose filter systems and the machine parts which contact the material are lined with a ceramic covering, which the company said significantly improves the service life of the expendable parts.
The plant is operated by a fully automatic, electronic control system, which was supplied by BT-Anlagenbau.
BT-Wolfgang added that the complete project, from the award of contract to transfer to the customer, was realised in approximately 10 months.
