The new plant in Liège is designed for a throughput of 14.5 tonnes per hour. This means processing 223 m3 of waste at a density of 65 kg per cubic metre every hour. In the end, there will be 17 separated fractions with purities from 93 % to 97 %. At the same time, the losses in the individual grades will not exceed 2 % to 5 %. In addition to the separation into different recyclable materials – such as aluminium, HDPE or PE films – the processing plant can separate different colours of PET in fractions. Among other things, the system will distinguish between clear, blue, other coloured and opaque PET types and sort them into pure fractions. More thermoformed PET-Trays is also recognised and divided separately.
For the correspondingly extensive process technology, a construction of over 1000 tonnes of steel and more than three kilometres of conveyors were necessary. The Eggersmann Anlagenbau carried out the assembly in the period from May 2022 to January 2023 and was also responsible for the installation of the entire electrical equipment and control system.
The Eggersmann Anlagenbau GmbH was not the only company involved in the project. In order to implement the complex sorting, machines from BRT HARTNER and the Eggersmann GmbH are also used as key-machines in the process. SITEL had engaged the engineering and architecture firms BSolutions and SEMACO for planning and coordination.
“With this investment, SITEL has taken exactly the right step into the future. The quantities of LPW continue to increase, while at the same time the awareness for a real recycling of plastics is growing. Naturally, this also increases the demands on the sorting plants. In short: ever larger quantities have to be separated into ever more precise fractions” is how Laurence Dauchy, Sales and Project Manager at the Eggersmann Anlagenbau, sums up the current development. “We are very grateful that we were able to realise this project for SITEL.”
SITEL is part of the inter-municipal association Intradel, which includes 72 municipalities in the province of Liège. The construction became necessary because the facility previously operated by SITEL for sorting regional LPW could no longer handle the increasing volumes and the addition of foils to the Belgian LPW collection system. As modernisation and expansion were not economic options, the construction of a new plant was put out to public tender.
