MRF Materials Recovery

What is Material Recovery Facility (MRF)?

Material Recovery Facility (MRF) is also known as Material Reclamation Facility or Material Recycling Facility. It is a plant that separates and prepares single-stream recycling materials to be sold to end buyers.

What Does a Materials Recovery Facility Sort?

Materials recovery facilities sort a wide array of recyclable materials, including, but not limited to:

Plastics

Cardboard (OCC)

Paper including newspapers, magazines, office paper, mixed paper, etc.

Glass bottles and jars

Metal containers, including aluminum and steel cans

Cartons

Two primary types of Material Recovery Facility (MRF):

Clean MRF

A clean MRF only processes residential or commercial single-stream recycling, that means it only receive materials that are recyclable and that have been separated out from your household’s or business’s regular trash.

Dirty MRF

A dirty MRF receives all of your trash without prior separation. Dirty MRFs can also receive regular trash that has already been separated so that they can go through it to find recyclable materials that were missed or accidentally thrown in the wrong bin.

There is a third materials recovery facility type, known as a wet MRF, which is essentially a dirty MRF in which water is present to separate and clean recycling streams, and in some cases, begin to biodegrade certain organics to make them ready to enter an anaerobic digestion facility.

MRF Process – How does it work?

Step 1

The collected material is delivered to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and tipped into the loading area. It is then fed onto conveyors by mechanical shovel. The purpose of using conveyors is to provide a controlled, constant flow of material to the system.

Step 2

The material is transferred onto an elevating conveyor, which in turn feeds the material to the pre-sort conveyors. The elevating conveyor operates at a faster speed to reduce the material depth for delivery to the pre-sort area.

Step 3

Once in the pre-sort area the non-recyclable material is manually picked out and discharged into the storage bays below.

Step 4

The mixed material flowing from the pre-sort area enters two trommel screens which then separate into three components:

Containers and fine materials

Newspapers and magazines

Card and some papers

Step 5

The materials are further processed using disc screens and conveyors. The MRFs are equipped with sophisticated automatic recognition and sorting of products. This system is used in three separate locations within each facility and works on an optical identification and separation using air jets.

Step 6

Following the automated process of separation, the product lines are monitored manually and any non-recyclable material is picked off and goes into a residual storage bay.

Step 7

A magnetic separator removes steel cans automatically and transfers them to a storage bunker. An eddy current-separator is used to extract the aluminium cans which are stored in another bunker.

Zhongan provides comprehensive disposal technology solutions for MRF operators, including raw waste shredding, sorting, project planning, solution customization, high-quality equipment manufacturing, operation and maintenance.

Zhongan’s Factory:

Zhongan machining & production workshop 10,699m2, with more than 100 sets mechanical processing facilities, including 60 sets precision machining equipments in high-precision CNC machining centers and large-scale CNC machining centers, which can complete the production and processing of all core components. Zhongan’s in house technical team is involved in machinery, electrical automation, hydraulic technology, IoT technology such as these professional fields, which ensures our strong technological competitiveness.

Zhongan’s Service:

Zhongan specially focuses on solid waste reduction, harmlessness, resource utilization technology and disposal equipment R&D, manufacturing, sales and service, provides customers with one stop solid waste renewable equipment & technological solution.

Zhongan’s main business covers comprehensive waste disposal which includes C&I waste, bulky and garden waste, biomass agricultural and forestry waste, organic, medical waste, hazardous waste pretreatment, waste tire recycling, MSW shredding & sorting, etc.

Full Life Cycle Service, Lifetime Technical Supports:

Zhongan’s in-house team of experinced engineers covered machinery, electrical automation, hydraulic technology and IoT such as these professional fields, provides overal service solutions such as cutter repair, parts customization, euqipment maintenance, updating, and fault detection, higher effeciency and better safety.