Kiverco completes another complex project for a major UK customer

The customer

Tom White Waste Ltd was formed in 1981, when Tom White found it difficult to obtain waste management services for his other businesses and decided to start his own waste management operation. Since then, the business has grown hugely and in 1988, Tom’s sons Ian and Paul joined the business and today, they run the company as joint managing directors. Tom White Waste operates in the Commercial, Industrial and domestic market sectors and covers an area of 30 miles radius from their state of the art facility in Coventry.

The challenge

A little more than 12 months ago, Ian and Paul realised that the company needed to develop significant additional waste processing capacity, both to service their present markets and to take the business into new market segments such as the production of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) whilst also keeping strict environmental control. Tom White Waste has always been known as a forward thinking and innovative business and the new facility was conceived from the outset to represent a quantum leap in terms of the new facilities available, the significant increase in waste handling capacity and crucially, the equipment needed to provide the enhanced service levels. The conclusion was simple: construct a brand new, high specification building to house a new, high performance recycling plant. The result of this major investment of c£10m can be seen now as the new plant opens for business.

The solution

Kiverco has been involved in this project from its earliest days and worked extensively with the customer to arrive at an optimum solution both to handle the existing workload and ensure sufficient future capacity. The plant has been designed to process up to 100,000 tonnes of mixed waste per annum, with the option to recover key products for recycling and to process the residual waste into an RDF product, which can then be baled and wrapped prior to transportation to the end user. The process for handling the incoming material and segregating it in order to be able to produce final products to the required specification is as follows:

1. Material is fed directly to a primary shredder, to reduce volume and liberate material, giving a homogenous product of approx. 300mm particle size.
   1. From the shredder it is conveyed to a trommel with two different screening apertures; 40mm and 150mm
2. The -40mm fraction is collected beneath the trommel and conveyed beneath a Steinert in-line magnet to remove ferrous metals.
   1. From here material is fed directly to a Spaleck flip-flow screen to remove -10mm fines to a bay beneath
3. The 10-40mm material is fed directly from the flip-flow screen to a Kiverco density separator which produces a clean heavy fraction and a light fraction suitable for RDF
4. The 40-150mm midsize fraction from the trommel and the oversize fraction are conveyed in parallel to two Walair density separators – at this point there are a series of bi-directional conveyors which allow the both the midsize & oversize to be blended together to run one line at a reduced capacity, thus increasing the customers overall annual availability, during routine maintenance periods
5. The heavy fraction from both density separators is combined and conveyed beneath a Steinert cross belt magnet to remove ferrous metals.  This heavy fraction is then conveyed through a sorting cabin where operatives can recover products or remove any remaining contaminants to leave a clean heavy fraction
6. Finally, the light fraction from both density separators is conveyed through parallel sorting cabins where operatives can recover products or remove materials unsuitable for the final RDF product

Ian White – Managing Director said “In a business that cannot easily stop when work overwhelms you then, robust and efficient plant is a must. We have had the pleasure of using Kiverco sorting systems for nearly 10 years and they were the first choice for plant in our new £10m waste processing expansion. The uptime of our existing Kiverco plant has been outstanding and is supported by great service, parts and support. We look forward to another 10 years working together with Kiverco.”

John Lines – Sales and Marketing Director, Kiverco said “Ian White is a demanding customer and his requirements for this plant were very clear to us. He needed the necessary technology incorporated into the plant to ensure high throughput and maximum flexibility to operate the plant according to changing market and customer requirements. We are delighted that Ian was confident that we could meet the challenge and are immensely proud to be associated with this flagship plant, which has been designed, built, installed and commissioned by Kiverco in record time”.

For more information please visit www.kiverco.com