On September 20th, Iren and Stadler welcomed a group of select customers and international press representatives to their state-of-the-art Circular Plastic sorting plant in Turin, Italy. Hosted by the management teams of both companies, the event featured a presentation on Stadler's innovative solutions, followed by an informative tour of the facility.
Iren SpA, the leading multi-utility company in the north-west of Italy, is committed to a sustainable development model. It is one of the country’s main operators in the sectors of electricity, gas, district heating, management of integrated water and environmental services, and integrated solutions for energy efficiency. Through its environmental management company, Iren Ambiente, it plays a leading role in the circular economy by transforming waste into resources for the territory, closing the loop.
Iren has called on Stadler’s expertise for the design and installation of its Circular Plastic sorting plant - the largest in Italy. Located in Borgaro, near Turin, the new facility has an annual capacity of 100,000t. It integrates innovative solutions and advanced technologies to automatically sort 17 types of polymers and plastics, aluminium, and ferrous materials, ensuring maximum operational flexibility. This process delivers high-quality output, returning up to 80% of input materials to the recycling loop.
This is the latest project in a successful collaboration between Iren and Stadler: “We are proud to be Iren’s supplier,” says Paolo Cravedi, Senior Project Manager at Stadler. “We started with a small project in 2020, then went on to work together on Iren’s WEEE plant in Volpiano, its plastic recycling plant in Pianezza and the ReCap facility in Parma, which processes both plastics and cardboard. We also designed and built the Valterza plant in Asti, which sorts mixed plastic waste made up of mainly bottles and films.”
“We know Stadler well and we appreciate their excellent organization, high reliability, and the precision with which they execute all projects,” comments Ing. Flaviano Fracaro, Technical Director at Iren Ambiente. “Equally important for us is the quality and reliability of their products: in our experience, all installations have gone into production on schedule, with short start-up periods, and deliver excellent performance, minimizing issues and downtime.
Innovative solutions for high quality output and recovery rates
The Circular Plastic plant starts the process by separating the incoming material into three streams: bulky, medium and fines.
The bulky material is screened with a special model of Stadler STT5000 ballistic separator, which ensures a better separation of film, then separated in a sorting cabin.
A distinguishing feature of the plant is the line dedicated to fine material after it is extracted by a Stadler trommel screen and ballistic separators. On this line, the fines are processed through a magnet separator and eddy current system to extract all the ferrous material and aluminium, then treated with a Stadler trommel screen and two optical separators to recover small plastic components such as bottle caps and other valuables.
The medium-d material is split into two lines, each with a Stadler STT5000 ballistic separator, to sort the 2D and 3D material, while fines are sent to the dedicated fines line. The 2D stream goes through 6 optical separators to sort films into PP, PE and bio-film.
The 3D stream is cleaned of ferrous materials, then separated with optical sorters into clear PET, blue PET, coloured PET, opaque PET and trays. Further optical sorting ensures additional automatic quality control and cleaning of these primary products. In parallel, HDPE, PS and PP fractions are sorted on a second line. The output of the two 3D lines comes together for the extraction of clean aluminium particles.
All residual materials from the 2D and 3D lines go through a second sorting process, fed into optical sorters to recover any valuable materials left, which are sent to an advanced bottle recovery line, which is another stand-out feature of the Circular Plastic plant. It is equipped with a bottle opener, a dedicated ballistic separator and a material dosing system to guarantee maximum recovery.
