LRS Exchange Material Recovery Facility (Modern RHRF) Chicago

STEPS

Recycling Process

The recycling process at the Exchange begins when the collection trucks arrive and are weighed at the scale house to determine the incoming material’s tonnage. The recyclables are then unloaded onto the tipping floor, where a fully electric material handler transfers them onto a conveyor belt. The material first encounters a swing arm feeder that breaks up materials for single stream and opens any plastic bags. Then the materials go through a rotating metal shaft also called auger screen. This screen acts as a pre-sort, and then a CP auger screen sorts items based on size, allowing larger items (OCC) to pass over whereas smaller items, such as bottles and jars, fall through. These smaller items hit a glass breaker, where glass is crushed and processed with the help of a cyclone separator. This equipment utilizes circular air motion to segregate denser glass materials which drops down and separates from lighter materials like plastic and paper. The recyclables then are conveyed to an additional screen called a CP screen built to segregate materials based on their dimensionality. Two-dimensional items like flat plastic and paper are segregated from 3-dimensional items such as beverage cans and bottles. Later a drum magnet helps capture ferrous materials which separates magnetic products, and the remaining materials move forward for processing.

There are three optical sorters for separating plastic. The optical sorting unit featuring infrared technology detects items like #5 PP, #2 HDPE and #1 PET as per their light refraction characteristic. Later air jets place these items into specified bins for further processing. Aluminum is separated with the help of an eddy current in which a loop of electrical current repels and separate aluminum. Towards the end of the line, there is an AI-driven robotic arm that detects and separates missed aluminum beverage cans powered by vacuum-based technology. Once the materials are sorted they are sent for baling. The facility is equipped with two Harris two-ram balers for compressing recovered recyclables which are later stored in an area before being sent for shipping.