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Recycling Metals Services
Twence not only generates a great amount of energy from waste, but we also recover a lot of metals from that waste, both ferrous and non-ferrous. In 2010, we managed to recycle 12,918 tonnes of ferrous and 1,676 tonnes of non-ferrous metals. Following the combustion process in our Waste-to-Energy Plant, we recover the metals in the Slag-reprocessing Unit. That is where the ash and the cinders or slag that remain after combustion are sifted and made fine. We use magnets to remove any ferrous metals from the combustion residues.
For the non-ferrous metals we make use of the `Eddy Current` principle, which holds that every conductive particle that is exposed to a changing magnetic field will itself become magnetic. When such a magnetic field is generated in the plant, materials such as copper or aluminium, which are not magnetic of themselves, will behave temporarily as if they were magnetic. That enables us to separate them from the bottom ash.
In the Biomass Power Plant we separate the metals from the wood before the material goes into the incinerator. The small amount of metal that remains there after combustion is then removed in the Slag-reprocessing Unit.
Besides recovering metals from our Waste-to-Energy Plant, we also recycle metals from the organic material that comes to our Bioconversion Plant and from the bulky household and industrial waste that we process in the Waste Sorting Plant. Those metals are either brought to a blast furnace or to specialised companies that are capable of further separating the various non-ferrous metals. In each case, the metals will form the basis for new products. Since there is no need to smelt those metals from their ore, this way of recycling leads to a considerable reduction in both energy consumption and CO2 emissions.