Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) is a fuel prepared from non-hazardous waste, and used for energy recovery in incineration and co-incineration plants. It consists of small fractions of waste with a high calorific value. This makes it also suitable for use in cement kiln installations.

Our client is a non-hazardous waste valorisation plant, and needed to build a conveying line to deliver different types of SRF into storage boxes after shredding, separation and classification process. The required output was 150 m3/h.

Transport in 3 steps

To solve this need, Sinfimasa designed three chain conveyors; the first one would transport the SRF at a horizontal distance of about 10m and would elevate it to a height of 8m. The second conveyor is positioned horizontally over a distance of 4,7 m. An important function of this conveyor is to ensure the sectorization of two fire zones, so it was equipped with firewall slide gates.
A third conveyor was designed and manufactured to distribute the fuel between the storage boxes, so it was equipped with three intermediate chutes and a last discharge point that is always open. The length of this chain conveyor is 17 meters.
The first chain was designed with a first horizontal section of 2.5 meters, a curve at an angle of 54° and a distance of 8.2 meters to reach the required height of 8 m, a second curve and a last horizontal section of 2 meters in length.

Reliable and durable

To ensure reliability and reduce maintenance costs the three conveyors were designed and manufactured with double forged chain with a section of 900 mm wide x 550 mm high. For the horizontal conveyors orthogonal geared motors of 2.2 kW were used, and 7.5 kW for the conveyor with lifting function. All motors are equipped with frequency converters to regulate the speed of the equipment according to the bulk density of the material.

Special care for curved sections

Special guides were installed to prevent the chain from lifting in the curved sections, as well as drive and return wheels made of wear-resistant steel. The firewall-type guillotine slides were equipped with a fast pneumatic actuator. The three conveyors were also equipped with rotation and jam detectors to monitor correct operation, as well as different inspection points, registers and inspection windows to facilitate maintenance.

No landfill
The plant currently recovers more than 50,000 tons of waste in this plant, thus avoiding dumping and the associated environmental impacts.