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PM Shotton, one of the UK’s largest recyclers of used newsprint and magazines, has installed a complete dust extraction plant, from Dust Control Systems Ltd, at its new £17-million materials recovery facility (MRF) in North Wales.

Located at the site of the Finish-owned company’s UPM Shotton paper mill, the 250ktpa facility is designed to sort mixed recyclables from kerbside collections such as plastic bottles, cardboard, newspapers and metals.

Around 120kt will be newspapers and magazines, which will provide 20% of the recovered paper used as raw material in the mill’s paper production.

DCS Ltd was contracted to provide a complete turn-key package, including design, supply, installation and commissioning of a material stream dust control system serving drum feeders, sort conveyors, optical sorters and screens.

The DCS installation comprises an externally located filter unit, strategically-sited extraction hoods, interconnecting ductwork and a briquetting press.

The ATEX compliant filter is a high-efficiency Schuko EcoVar 04 series 2030 modular unit, which has a filter surface area of 677m2, and a total airflow capacity of 60,000m3/hr.

The filter is fitted with tubular filter elements designed for duty on fibrous dusts, and its 75kW fanset provides 24/7 extraction. Collected dust waste is discharged pressure-free from the filter hoppers, via a heavy-duty conveyor and rotary valve, directly into a pre-receiving briquetting hopper.

Extracted dust is then screw fed to the briquettor which is capable of pressing up to 100kg of extracted dust per hour to form 60mm diameter briquettes to be used as boiler feed. Return air ductwork is provided to allow warm cleaned air to be returned to the building in winter and discharged to atmosphere in summer by the manual operation of summer/winter dampers.

Variable speed technology is employed to control and vary fan speed should there be a need to increase or decrease extraction efficiency to different areas of the plant. Air volumes are automatically adjusted when manually operated dampers are closed and re-opened.

DCS worked very closely with UPM Shotton throughout the specification, supply and installation process, and also with Machinex who supplied and installed the recycling plant, said John Barker of DCS Ltd.

"UPM required clearly defined activity schedules to match their own building programme," he said. The contract also included final warranty tests based on HSG 258 (Control of Airborne Contaminates at Work) plus visual tests which were carried out using a high intensity light beam.

(Image source: DCS)