An innovative plant designed by STADLER for Eco.Ge.Ri recovers value from waste to produce high quality recyclable materials and solid recovered fuel.
The Porcarelli Group is an Italian company that operates along the entire waste chain, from collection and transport to the valorisation of waste as a raw material. Luciano Porcarelli, co-owner of the group with his brother Giuseppe, explains: “Our company was founded more than 50 years ago with the conviction that waste can replace raw materials in industry, thus preserving natural resources.” The group operates five plants with the aim of returning waste to the production cycle, thus reducing the consumption of virgin raw materials and energy. To date, its plants have recovered more than 3 million tonnes of recyclable fractions.
When planning its Eco.Ge.Ri plant for the production of solid recovered fuel (SRF) from industrial waste, which will be inaugurated in 2022 in Finale Emilia (Modena), the Porcarelli Group relied on STADLER for its state-of-the-art sorting technology, expert design, professional and fast installation and TOMRA for its advanced sensor-based technology. “We have been successfully collaborating with STADLER since 2012. When we decided to build a new modern plant in Finale Emilia STADLER was the obvious choice,” says Luciano Porcarelli. “Its experience in different waste sectors was invaluable to help us design a flexible and robust plant.” The Eco.Ge.Ri plant is one of the most innovative of its kind in Europe, diverting around 150,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste from landfill each year.
This project, with Eco.Ge.Ri’s innovative vision, STADLER’s engineering expertise in the design and construction of bespoke recycling facilities and advanced sorting solutions, demonstrates that waste management can be sustainable and cost effective, helping to conserve natural resources and reduce our overall environmental impact.
Extreme flexibility, high throughput, consistently high-quality output
Gruppo Porcarelli’s demands for the plant were clear: it needed a plant capable of very high throughput, with the flexibility to process a wide variety of input materials, while maintaining a consistently high quality of output throughout the process, with maximum recovery of recyclable materials.
STADLER presented an innovative design concept: “We combined our ballistic separators and high-speed acceleration conveyors with film stabilizer, which ensure excellent materials selection and PVC control,” says Pietro Navarotto, STADLER Sales Director Italy. The design delivers on all counts: “The plant receives industrial waste from different sources with an input capacity from 20 to 30 tph. It successfully recovers iron, aluminium, multiple types of plastics – PET, PEHD, PELD, PP, PS, PU – paper and cardboard, and of course very high-quality SRF.”
The design addressed the challenge of the variability of the infeed materials with two infeed lines, which can be used independently or together, depending on the quality and density of the material. The first line feeds the material to a STADLER trommel screen for size selection (<60mm; medium size 60mm to 350mm; and oversized >350mm), while the second line has a shredder for size reduction followed by a further STADLER trommel screen for size selection.
Materials in the 60 to 350mm range go through two STADLER STT5000_8 ballistic separators to sort out fines, 3D and 2D material. This is STADLER’s all-rounder, ideal for separating pre-sorted MSW, moderately heavy and heavy materials. STADLER’s new high-speed acceleration conveyor with the new STADLER film stabilizer transports the 3D and 2D materials to TOMRA near infrared (NIR) sorters at speeds of 4.5 m/s. Two of the sorters eject plastics with high chlorine values from the 2D stream, while the other two sort plastics for recovery from the 3D stream, and the remaining material goes to SRF. A TOMRA RDF analyses the SRF, checking in real-time the output material quality in terms of calorific values, humidity and product composition to ensure they meet the requirements for usage.
Smooth and timely commissioning
The Eco.Ge.Ri plant was designed and built in record time and completed on schedule in just three months. Due to the tight schedule, installation was carried out while the building was still under construction. STADLER’s careful planning and coordination with the construction companies involved on site ensured that the plant could be commissioned on time, with commissioning scheduled for 6 June 2022.
For Luciano Porcarelli, this capacity was an outstanding advantage in this project, who most appreciated “without a doubt, STADLER’s flexibility in dealing with all the difficulties we had in building a new plant with several construction companies working at the same time. Their experience in complicated assemblies was really helpful”.
A successful collaboration
Eco.Ge.Ri is the second plant that STADER has designed and built for Gruppo Porcarelli: “in 2012 we built a waste treatment plant for the recovery of raw materials and production of SRF, and since then we’ve had a very successful collaboration,” says Pietro Navarotto.
STADLER’s approach to designing and building sorting plants with a strong local team backed by its Head Office organization has once again proved effective, as Luciano Porcarelli highlighted: “STADLER managed all the project design from their Italian branch. We really appreciated this local approach because it made the communication between companies much faster and easier.”
