Valorsul, a leading company in the environmental sector, handles the processing of around 850,000 tons of municipal waste produced every year in 19 municipalities in Greater Lisbon and the Western Region. The company chose Stadler for the design and installation of the substantial upgrade and optimization of the sorting plant at its Centro de Triagem do Oeste, one of the two light packaging treatment facilities it operates.
With this project, Valorsul aimed to increase throughput capacity of the facility while maintaining the high purity of its outputs, as well as simplifying its operation. António Afonso, Recycling Plant Manager at Valorsul explains: “We chose Stadler because of the quality and detail of the studies they presented. Also, the visits we made to various facilities designed by Stadler allowed us to ascertain the quality of the equipment and of its assembly.”
New plant delivers increased throughput capacity with high purity output
The process begins with the incoming waste being fed into a bulky items sorting cabin and bag opener before going through two Stadler STT2000 ballistic separators that separate the flexible and 3D materials. Film recovery from the flexible output is improved with the use of a new aspiration system and STT2000 ballistic separators with forced ventilation. Metals are recovered from the 3D materials from ballistic separation with new electromagnet and eddy current separators, and sorted into ferrous and non-ferrous metals, while optical sorters recover PET bottles, HDPE, Tetra Pak and a Plastic Mix. An optical sorter from the original plant is used to conduct an automatic quality control of the PET, HDPE and Tetra Pak fractions.
“To increase the facility’s capacity while maintaining the high quality of the output, we have replaced the one ballistic separator in the original plant with two STT2000 ballistic separators and we have installed larger capacity optical sorters featuring the latest technology. We have also included two new sorting cabins to simplify manual sorting and quality control,” says Carlos Manchado Atienza, Stadler International Sales Director.
Designed for simpler operation
Simplifying the plant’s operation was another important requirement from Valorsul. To address this demand, Stadler designed the layout to allow for better access to critical equipment. It also significantly simplified the product baling process by integrating the metal baler into the Stadler support structure, so that bales fall directly into an open box container, and by using automatic bunkers for easier storage. This approach significantly facilitates the recovery of high-quality output.
Óscar Horcajada Torres, Stadler Selecciona Project Manager, says: “For example, in the ferrous metals baling process, we use a smaller bunker which, in coordination with the elevated baler and the new quality control cabin, greatly simplify the recovery of high-quality ferrous metals.”
