Outstanding biomass treatment with the QZ - MeWa Recycling ...

MeWa-International
Commissioning: Egbert Tölle, REMONDIS board;
Michaela Hinterholzer, Austrian MP; Ernest
Gabmann, deputy state governor; Dr Helmut
Kolba, managing director UFH RE-cycling; Elmar
Kniesel, MeWa assembly manager; Gerhard Jokic,
managing director UFH RE-cycling; Juliana Günther,
mayor of Kematen (from left to right).
Austria leading the way with
refrigerator recycling
When it comes to environmental
protection, Austria is
considered a flagship country.
The country’s politicians therefore
rightly appeared proud
at the commissioning of a
state-of-the-art refrigerator
recycling plant in Kematen
near Linz in February 2009.
W
ith the project in Kematen
“We are setting new standards
for refrigerator disposal
in Europe.“ Both Ernest Gabmann,
deputy state governor of Lower Austria
and Dr Leopold Zahrer from the Austrian
Ministry for the Environment were in
agreement on this in the speeches they
gave on the occasion of the inauguration
of the new plant. At the new waste
disposal operation, up to 300,000 refrigerators
will be treated each year and
90 tonnes of CFCs gained. The plant’s
operation will correspond to a saving to
the environment of 900,000 tonnes of
CO 2 each year.
Use of CFCs was banned in Germany
in 1996 when the refrigerant was
identified as ozone depletant number 1.
Despite this law, the number of CFC refrigerators
still in operation throughout
Europe is estimated at more than 200
million. This generation of refrigerators
is now reaching the recycling plants.
“The plant enables CFC and pentane
refrigerators to be processed simultaneously
without having to be separated
beforehand,“ explains MeWa
managing director Helmut Oberguggen-
berger talking about the plant’s advantages.
Besides the extraordinarily high
rate of CFCs regained, investors were
impressed by the plant’s economic operation
and results.
With its rotating chains, the MeWa
Querstromzerspaner (QZ) exposes the
individual fractions from the refrigerators
in just one processing step. In doing
so, the QZ separates the material compounds
of the refrigerators into iron, aluminium,
copper and plastic. At the end,
the secondary raw materials are fed into
containers ready for collection as category
1 cooling waste for sale.
“The latest technology enables almost
95 % of all materials from a refrigerator
to be regained as raw materials
for new products,“ explains Dr Helmut
MeWa-News March 2009