Equipment Report

Bunting ships separation conveyor to North Carolina auto recycler

In the fall of 2022, Newton, Kansas-based equipment maker Bunting shipped a sizable stainless steel separation conveyor (SSSC) to a North Carolina recycling operation that processes mixed shredded material. When market conditions call for high-purity zorba that is free of stainless scrap—or for pure stainless shred—the SSSC owner will be ready, Bunting says.

“An automotive recycler in North Carolina is the proud new owner of an exceptionally large SSSC conveyor [that] is 2 feet wide and 38 feet long,” Bunting states. The equipment supplier says the recycler will “now freely pull midsized stainless steel pieces out of shredded automotive shredder residue (ASR).”

“We utilize a patented magnetic circuit that creates some of the most powerful high-intensity magnetic head pulleys in the industry,” says Jake Fenwick of Bunting. “The magnetic head pulley gauss and circuit design gives us the ability to magnetically separate very weakly paramagnetic materials out of the product stream of ASR or ICW [insulated copper wire] lines. Then, depending on the fraction size, we will determine which unit we would recommend.”

The customer for the order was equipped with the 38-foot-long SSSC because it believed a single, longer SSSC was better than going with a series of standard 12-foot SSSC conveyors. The sequential conveyors, in the customer’s case, also would have required an additional inline transfer to feed them, according to Bunting.

“For fun perspective on the size of this conveyor, we [turn] to baseball,” Bunting writes. “The Green Monster wall in left field of Fenway Park is 37 feet tall. The green SSSC is 38 feet long.”

Fenwick, a technical writer with Bunting, tells Recycling Today that SSSCs typically are placed in line “after all the ferrous metals have been removed—this is critical. We separate 300 series stainless steel from plastic, glass, ASR, zurik, zorba or ICW streams. The key to optimal stainless steel separation is utilizing dry material with a consistent fraction size and making sure the material that flows over the high-intensity magnetic head pulley is at a thin/monolayer stream.”

He adds, “Different designs and sizes are used depending on the fraction size. For example, most ASR will come out of a trommel screen in small, mid- and large-fraction streams, which utilize different models of SSSCs.”

Fenwick says Bunting sells and configures SSSCs for customers with different challenges and priorities.

“We basically have three different sets of customers,” he says. “The primary customer is looking for a 98 percent or higher purity stainless steel fraction to sell to a smelter for their highest ROI [return on investment]. The second customers are looking to pull all the stainless and other ferritic organic material out of their primary metal stream. An example of this would be taking stainless and slightly magnetic foam/cloth out of an ICW stream prior to chopping. The third would be pulling stainless steel out of a zorba stream to give a higher purity of aluminum.”

While the SSSC deployed in North Carolina was made at one of Bunting’s three U.S. facilities, Fenwick says customers in Europe can buy SSSCs assembled in the firm’s U.K. plant. He says delivery times can run from eight to 16 weeks.

Machinex helps launch MRF at Guantanamo Bay

Machinex, Plessisville, Quebec, has announced the startup of a new single-stream processing system and other various waste processing, baling and shredding equipment for the U.S. naval station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

According to a news release from Machinex, this project is a result of a partnership between Machinex; HDR of Omaha, Nebraska; and RQ Construction of Carlsbad, California. RQ Construction chose to work with Machinex on HDR’s recommendation because of its expertise in the recycling industry and ability to offer the most effective solution for the naval station.

“As this was a federal bid, it was a new and demanding process that required precision and the highest level of planning,” RQ Construction on-site Project Manager Cody Phillips says. “Machinex not only kept schedules during tumultuous times but also was instrumental in making sure the entire project went as planned.”

Jerome Lemay, lead project manager for Machinex, says one of the most interesting challenges to this project was accessing the island with the equipment and crews. The size of the project required more than 40 shipping containers. RQ used a barge that traveled every two-to-three weeks for island delivery of the equipment. Two naval planes traveled weekly for crews to enter and leave the island.

“When I first heard the details of this opportunity in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it became a Code Red project for Machinex,” says Chris Hawn, CEO of Machinex Technologies, the company’s U.S. subsidiary based in North Carolina. “A good friend named Jessup reminded me that our existence in the world of waste, while grotesque and incomprehensible to some, saves the planet.”