Materials recovery facility

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A materials recovery facility or materials reclamation facility (MRF -- pronounced "murf") is a specialized plant that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers. Generally, there are two types - clean and dirty MRF's.

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[edit] Clean MRF

A clean MRF accepts recyclable commingled materials that have been collected from curbside collection separated at source from municipal solid waste generated by either residential or commercial sources. There are a variety of clean MRF's. The most common currently are 2-stream MRF's, where source-separated recyclables are delivered in the form of a mixed food and beverage container stream (typically glass, ferrous metal, aluminum and other non-ferrous metals, PET [No.1] and HDPE [No.2] plastics) and a mixed paper stream.

The composition of the mixed paper stream can vary considerably, depending on the marketing arrangements that are available to the MRF operator. A typical mixed paper stream will consist of old newspapers with their inserts, old magazines and kraft (brown) paper bags. Some MRF's are able to handle a mixed paper stream consisting of a wider variety of paper types that includes old corrugated, junk mail, telephone books and even paperboard.

[edit] Dirty MRF

A dirty MRF accepts a mixed solid waste stream and then proceeds to separate out designated recyclable materials through a combination of manual and mechanical sorting. The sorted recyclable materials may undergo further processing required to meet technical specifications established by end-markets while the balance of the mixed waste stream is sent to a disposal facility such as a landfill.

The percentage of residuals (unrecoverable recyclable or non-program materials) from a properly operated clean MRF supported by an effective public outreach and education program should not exceed 10% by weight of the total delivered stream and in many cases it can be significantly below 5%.[citation needed] A dirty MRF recovers between 5% and 45% of the incoming material as recyclables,[citation needed] then the remainder is landfilled or otherwise disposed.

[edit] Wet MRF

A wet materials recovery facility
A wet materials recovery facility

New mechanical biological treatment technologies are now beginning to utilise wet MRFs.[1] This combines a dirty MRF with water which acts to density separate and clean the output streams. It also hydrocrushes and dissolves biodegradable organics in solution to make them suitable for anaerobic digestion.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ ArrowBio Process Finstein, M. S., Zadik, Y., Marshall, A. T. & Brody, D. (2004) The ArrowBio Process for Mixed Municipal Solid Waste – Responses to “Requests for Information”, Proceedings for Biodegradable and Residual Waste Management, Proceedings. (Eds. E. K. Papadimitriou & E. I. Stentiford), Technology and Service Providers Forum, p. 407-413

[edit] External links

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