In the United States (US), San Francisco-based renewable energy developer Brightmark Energy LLC has selected German material treatment and size reduction specialists Vecoplan AG to supply the necessary technology for processing input material, including powerful pre-shredders and post-shredders, for its planned "plastics-to-fuels" plant in Ashley, Indiana.
plastic-to-fuels plant in Indiana (photo courtesy Vecoplan).
Earlier this year Brightmark Energy achieved financial close on the Brightmark Energy Ashely Indiana project. Scheduled to go into operation in the summer of 2020, the new plant will produce around 68 million litres of diesel and petroleum fuel, plus just under 23 million litres of wax every year – all derived from around 100 000 tonnes of mixed plastic waste.
As announced in March 2018, BP will purchase the fuels produced by the facility, which will be distributed in the regional petroleum market. The Ashley plant will also produce commercial grade waxes for sale to the industrial wax market, which will be purchased by AM WAX.
The input consists of inferior plastic materials, such as residual waste from recovery plants and production waste. Brightmark Energy has now selected Vecoplan to supply the appropriate shredding technology to process this enormous quantity of plastics efficiently.
We checked out the relevant suppliers on the market really intensively – and it was Vecoplan who convinced us. We’re confident that we’ve selected the best supplier for this task. Now we’re looking forward to the successful installation of the systems, said Jay Schabel, Head of the Plastics Division at Brightmark Energy.
Based in Bad Marienberg in the Westerwald region of Germany, Vecoplan will supply a VAZ 2000 single-shaft pre-shredder, as well as a VEZ 2500 high-performance shredder, which is regarded as a benchmark in the industry thanks to its consistently high throughput and the homogeneous quality of its output.
Other system components are also necessary for plant operation – machines to remove non-shreddable foreign matter from the mass, for example, and to dry or pelletise the material are also part of the deal worth several EUR million.
In the run-up to the project, we carefully analysed the mixed waste to meet the plant’s stringent requirements, said Bob Gilmore, the Managing Director of Vecoplan’s American branch in Archdale, North Carolina, which will carry out the project in Ashley.
