Waste treatment plants for RDF (Refuse-Derived Fuel)

RDF plants recover recyclables from bulk waste and prepare the residual waste into a high calorific material so that it can be burnt as a fuel. This high-calorie material is called refuse-derived fuel (RDF) and it is suitable for burning at cement kilns, incinerators and other plants requiring input fuel.

Whatever your throughput, O.Kay will devise an RDF plant to suit your required footprint, budget and operating costs. We will also provide guaranteed recovery, purity and availability rating on all our equipment.

The advantages of O.Kay RDF production plants

• Recovery of recyclables otherwise going to landfill
• Avoidance of Landfill tax by diverting bulk waste from landfill
• The ability to process multiple waste streams e.g. industrial waste, aggregates and household waste over the same system
• An environmentally-friendly process
• Helps waste operators comply with the EU’s Landfill Directive
• Low value plastics, such as food trays and yoghurt pots, that are usually landfilled are an excellent high-calorie material for RDF
• 24-hour operation possible
• Low manual labour around the plant
• SCADA control systems to monitor and control the plant easily and remotely
• Advancing automated processes and sorting machines mean low levels of labour across the plant
• O.Kay’s large diameter trommels easily process the oversize materials within the waste stream
• We design the plant to produce RDF to the exact calorific value needed by the operator
• We design the plant to match capital budget
• Heavy-duty O.Kay machines withstand the hardwearing impact of aggregate, glass or skip waste content
• All our MRFs are fully guarded and covered to protect operators around the MRF

What is RDF?

RDF stands for Refuse-Derived Fuel because it is produced by the treatment of turning bulk waste into a high-calorie fuel.

Why produce RDF?

Alongside MBT, composting and Autoclaving, producing RDF offers waste operators another means of avoiding both the high costs of disposing bulk waste in a landfill site and the unwanted tag of being environmentally unfriendly. By diverting waste from Landfill, the waste operators will also comply with the increasingly influential Landfill Directive, a piece of legislation from the EU.

Why not just burn the bulk waste?

There are two reasons that turn the burning of bulk waste into a disadvantage. Firstly, the recyclable fraction within the bulk waste is a valuable resource and burning it is a waste, environmentally. This is why recycling comes higher in the government’s waste hierarchy than incineration. Secondly, bulk waste is notoriously variable, or non-homogenous, in terms of its make-up as well as being damp and often large and unwieldy. This causes big problems during the incineration process in terms of low and inconsistent energy content

What’s does an RDF plant do to the waste?

As an overview, an RDF plant will recover the recyclable content and remove the non-combustibles (mainly the organics) to deliver a dry, high calorie, uniform material for consistent, powerful burning. The RDF can be produced as pellets, in bales or loose.

Who uses RDF?

The RDF will often power a generator on site or it can be sold as a fuel to energy plants, cement kilns, incinerators etc. It can be sold to power stations as a fill-in material.

Worker safety

Whether we are installing a single sorting line or a high-tonnage automated MRF, we take the safety of our workers – and the safety your staff – very seriously. Our engineers are trained to the latest UK H&S standards and they infuse these standards into all our designs. They also arrange the in-depth training of all your operating staff so they too will work safely to the highest standards.

Typical equipment within a RDF production plant
Air Knives – to suck/blow out the lights fraction from any stream
Bag Openers – to open bags/sacks and release recyclables
Balers – to reduce the recovered product in size for reduced transport costs
Ballistic Separators – to separate flat-and-light items from rolling-and-heavy items
Bottle Perforators (Plastics) – to pierce and flatten plastic bottles for increased storage and reduced transport costs
Bottle Perforators (Glass) – to smash glass bottles for improved downstream sorting
Cabins – to protect sorters (shelter, heating, ventilation and air conditioning)
Can Crushers – to reduce the size/volume of recovered cans in storage bunker/transport
Conveyors – to transfer material to the screens, separators and bunkers
De-stoners – to separate heavy materials from light materials Disc (Card) Screens – to remove the fines fraction, to sort papers and card
Eddy Current Separators – to remove the non-ferrous content
Electro and Overband Magnets – to remove the ferrous content
Metering Systems – to allow front-end storage and a ‘perfect-flow’ feed into MRF
Paper Autosorts – to automatically separate all packaging, grey board and brown board from the News fraction using NIR (near infrared) detectors and CYNK (cyan, yellow, magenta and black) detectors and cameras
Pelletisers – to make the end product, the RDF, into pellets Plastic Autosorts – to automatically remove all plastics by polymer type and/or by colour
Pre-sorts – a type of picking belt used ahead of the primary screen to remove large contaminants
Picking Belts – to allow human sorters to sort materials or inspect recovered materials
SCADA Control Systems - to monitor and control large plants remotely
Shredders – to reduce materials into a smaller volume and/or a manageable size Trommels – to separate all types of materials by size (two, three or four-way splits available within single drum)
Walking Floors – to allow fast dumping of materials from trucks onto walking floor, which feeds materials into system. Also used in bunkers to walk materials onto baler feed conveyor

Options

• Plants for all throughput materials
• Automated recovery of packaging, card, paper, glass, FE, NFE, all plastics
• All types of mechanical screens
• Bag Openers (with bypass) for bagged and loose materials
• Cabins with Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Dust Control
• Dust Control systems across the MRF
• SCADA control systems
• Principal Contractor packages
• Preventive maintenance and total after sales customer care packages - please see servicing

Currently in use by these customers (via Sutco)

RWE Umwelt AG at their 30tph RDF plant in Neuss,
Kreiswerke Delitzsch at their 25tph RDF plant in Delitzsch,
GMA at their 20ph RDF plant in Wiefels.

Other related pages

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Composting & MBT
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Ash Treatment Plants
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