Viridor invests £3.7 million in MRF

Pictured above: Colin Richardson, Viridor's head of recycling assets

Viridor, Taunton, United Kingdom, invested £3.7 million (more than $4.8 million) in enhanced paper purity and fire protection systems at its Crayford material recovery facility (MRF) near Dartford, England, according to a Viridor press release. The Crayford MRF receives 300,000 metric tons (more than 330,000 short tons) of commingled content from 28 local authorities each year. 

According to a company press release, the Crayford MRF processes large volumes of municipal and commercial dry mixed materials—including paper, card, plastic bottles cans and glass—to produce a range of high-quality recyclable outputs. 

Viridor says this is a key site for processing recyclable material for a range of customers in the southeast and is the largest of Viridor’s MRFs, which extend across the United Kingdom. Colin Richardson, Viridor’s head of recycling assets, says the £3.7 million project was an investment in quality that will support the plant’s paper lines targeting the reduction of contamination levels within the fiber outputs.

“This will be achieved by specifically targeting [contaminants] in the sorted mixed paper (SMP) after processing from the ballistic separator lines,” Richardson says in a company press release.

Richardson says in the release that from Jan. 1, 2018, sorted mixed paper was banned from import to China, but a No. 8—a more refined paper grade with higher levels of news and pams compared with that of No. 7 mixed paper—was still permitted into China, subject to strict quality criteria. 

The Crayford MRF’s project reinforces Viridor’s goal of achieving quality, and it involved the installation of two optical sorters into a new building connected to Crayford’s main MRF. Additional screening, metal removal and quality controls will also be installed, according to the company press release.

In addition to the paper purity project, Richardson says Viridor has invested close to £1 million in a new fire protection and water cannon system at its Crayford MRF, which will cover multiple storage areas and site infrastructure.

“The new Helios fire protection and water cannon system is focused on the storage areas for incoming materials and this is considered the most likely source of any potential fires,” he says in the press release. “Helios makes use of two proprietary technologies, a thermal detection system, which in this case constantly scans within the waste pile for signs of temperature increase and automatically operated turrets designed to target the hotspot (rather than a sprinkler system, which will deluge a larger area). The turrets discharge water with an environmentally friendly additive, which penetrates the waste pile to cool the affected material and seal off the potential ignition spread. The fire service can override the automated system and manually direct firefighting efforts if required.”

According to the Viridor press release, the system is now fully commissioned.