Machinex upgrades county MRF in Richmond, California

Machinex, Plessisville, Quebec, has announced the launch of an upgraded a single-stream municipal recycling facility of West County Resource Recovery, located in Richmond, California. This project is the result of cooperation between Machinex and its client, Republic Services, Phoenix, to modernize the existing facility for additional sorting capacity.   

Machinex says it was chosen for this upgrade thanks to its capacity to provide and deliver a turnkey solution that increases tonnage while having the same number of sorters.   

The company says this design was specifically designed to face the challenges of the existing building while upgrading the system. Before the upgrade, the customer was running about 15 tons per hour and some of the older equipment was no longer working.  

Machinex was asked to increase processing capability without adding to the current sorter count and to eliminate rubber disc screens. Design challenges included working with the existing infeed pit along with putting together a design that utilized the existing baler and storage bunker setup.   

“We needed two ballistics to achieve the processing capacity goals set forth by the client,” says Rusty Angel, a regional sales manager for Machinex. “We utilized their existing drum feeder for the system infeed and also reused many of the existing bunkers at the front end of the system such as the presort bunkers and commodity bunkers since those were all live bottom bunkers and already in place. We did have to add one new walking floor bunker for the ferrous metals as they did not have enough bunkers to accommodate all of the recovered materials.”   

Features of the facility’s new system include a triple-deck Mach OCC screen with a fines screen underneath to remove the system fines early in the process. The new OCC screen features improved disc spacing and larger shafts to reduce daily cleaning. Two Mach ballistic separators were installed to handle the primary and secondary 2D/3D separation, which helps to reduce downtime and overall maintenance costs.   

This upgrade required some additional automation to meet this challenge. A Mach Hyspec dual-eject optical sorter has been incorporated to remove polyethylene terephthalate and high-density polyethylene  at the start of the container line. A new magnet and eddy current separator was also installed for ferrous and nonferrous recovery.   

The company says the features of this system make it reliable, efficient and flexible, with a limited footprint. The new MRF will be able to process more recyclables with the capacity to sort 22 to 24 tons per hour.   

Machinex worked alongside Republic to bring its expertise with creative design for retrofits. Requirements for the project were to select a partner that would be able to guide them through this major system upgrade, along with providing them a maintenance-friendly system that could increase the recovery of recyclable material.