Stadler equips packaging recycling facility in Portugal

Stadler Selecciona S.L.U., a Portugal-based subsidiary of German equipment maker Stadler Anlagenbau GmbH, has designed and installed a light packaging sorting plant for Valorsul at its Centro de Triagem do Oeste treatment facility in the Greater Lisbon region of Portugal.

Valorsul, a waste and recycling firm, processes around 850,000 tons of discarded municipal materials each year in 19 municipalities in the Lisbon area, and chose Stadler for what it calls a “substantial upgrade and optimization” of its Centro de Triagem do Oeste plant.

“We chose Stadler because of the quality and detail of the studies they presented,” says António Afonso, recycling plant manager at Valorsul. “Also, the visits we made to various facilities designed by Stadler allowed us to ascertain the quality of the equipment and of its assembly.”

In the newly configured plant, mixed material first passes through a sorting cabin and bag opener before then heading to two Stadler STT2000 ballistic separators that separate the flexible and 3D materials from each other.

Plastic film recovery from the flexible output is improved with the use of a new aspiration system and STT2000 ballistic separators with forced ventilation, Stadler says.

Metals are recovered from the 3D materials after ballistic separation with new electromagnet and eddy current separators and sorted into ferrous and nonferrous fractions.

Optical sorters then are used to identify and recover polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers, Tetra Paks and a mixed plastics grade. An optical sorter also engages in 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,” says Carlos Manchado Atienza, international sales director at Stadler. “We have also included two new sorting cabins to simplify manual sorting and quality control.”

Stadler also says it redesigned the plant’s layout to allow better access to critical equipment, and that it “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," the company 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 simplifies the recovery of high-quality ferrous metals," adds Óscar Horcajada Torres, Stadler Selecciona project manager.

“To ensure the seamless integration with the existing structure and equipment, we collected as many drawings and documentation of the original facility as we could. Also, plant modelling with a 3D scanner was very important. The excellent communication with the team at Valorsul was essential to the successful outcome of the project.”

Stadler completed the disassembly of the former plant and assembly of the new one in seven weeks, with the new facility being inaugurated last November. “During the assembly phase, the Stadler team stood out for its high level of experience, availability and compliance with safety rules, enabling the project to be carried out safely, on schedule and without delays,” Afonso says.

“[Stadler] achieved a perfect integration of the new equipment with the existing machines, achieving an organized, fluid sorting line with no operational constraints, and with accessibility to all equipment and circulation paths along the entire sorting line.”