IRG hires engineering firm for new SuperPRF

International Recycling Group (IRG), a recycling startup based in Erie, Pennsylvania, is in the process of constructing a postuse plastics sorting facility, which the company dubbed a “SuperPRF” (plastics recovery facility) in Erie by 2022. The startup reports that it has chosen RRT Design & Construction, Melville, New York, as its principal engineering design and project management firm for the project. RRT will help determine the process technologies, provide systems integration and coordinate project execution.

According to a news release from IRG, the company wants the facility to be very “technologically advanced.”  

“There have been significant advances recently in robotics and artificial intelligence on the front end for presorting nonplastic items, and this supports ever-more precise selection by the near infrared machines throughout the plant at very high speeds,” says Nat Egosi, president of RRT, regarding the new SuperPRF. “The SuperPRF will have multiple swim-lanes to handle traditional MRF material, commercial and agricultural film and mixed rigid plastics. These are highly variable resins, shapes, sizes, colors and forms. It will demand an array of machines programmed to identify and remove all types of unexpected, nonconforming materials which is a significant challenge we’re well prepared to address.”

Mitch Hecht, IRG’s founder and chairman, says, “The choice of engineering design firm for our new facility was really quite obvious from our perspective. With a track record of over 30 years in project development and procuring equipment and services on behalf of operators in the recycling industry, no one has the experience in designing waste recovery and recycling facilities that RRT has. They are on top of every best practice and emerging technology in the field.”

IRG’s is expected to break ground on its SuperPRF in the first half of 2021, with completion anticipated by the end of 2022, IRG reports.