Full Podcast Transcript
Val Andrews:
Hello everyone. My name is Val Andrews. I’m the Marketing Manager here at WENDT. Today I’m going to be interviewing our Business Development Managers in this Ask the Expert session. These questions have come from our customers on the topics that matter most to them. So with that, let’s get some introductions underway.
Ethan Willard:
Hi, my name is Ethan Willard. I’m the Business Development Manager for WENDT, for our Shredder division. I’ve been with the company for about 8 years.
Bill Close:
My name is Bill Close. I’ve been with WENDT for 31 years. I’m the Business Development Manager for the Non-Ferrous segment.
Dave Siejka:
My name is Dave Siejka. I am the MTB Business Development Manager and I have been with WENDT for 12 years.
Val Andrews:
Alright, great. Thanks guys. So with that, let’s get to some questions. Ethan, these first few questions are for you. What is your experience with air emissions from shredders requiring permits from regulatory agencies?
Ethan Willard:
So WENDT has done quite a bit of work in the past few years regarding emissions around shredders. It really started to become an issue about three years ago, with a few of our big clients. And, so around that time we, started investigating and looking into how we can treat emissions coming from an auto shredder. So we’ve been working on that now for the past few years. We have a number of installations that are working successfully now. And we’ve gone through the experience with our customers from the very beginning to end from the time they get notification of a violation, all the way to optimization of a new emission control system.
Val Andrews:
Great. Okay. Are you aware of any recent emission test results from shredders?
Ethan Willard:
Yes, there are a number of test results available online. Most of the tests that have been done under regulatory guidance are public knowledge. They are available online, just with a simple Google search.
Val Andrews:
Great. Here’s another one. We have a small hammer mill with not a lot of throughput. What is the best downstream equipment to separate copper, brass and stainless steel from non metallic metals?
Ethan Willard:
So after a hammer mill, the first step always, regardless of what you’re feeding is ferrous separation, a magnet to remove your ferrous material from all of your other non-ferrous material. After that, it’s usually recommended to meter the flow into a series of non-ferrous separation equipment like vibratory screens for separation of material by size, Eddy Currents for removal of aluminum. And then there’s a series of different sensor sorters out there for separation of brass from copper, and stainless steel, including, color separation and XRT x-ray separation.
Val Andrews:
Okay. Thanks, Ethan. Let’s move on to Bill for a few questions. What steps has WENDT taken to adapt to changing product specifications for China?
Bill Close:
Well there’s been severe disruption as we all know in the market. You know, from the changing Chinese specifications, WENDT‘s done a number of things to adapt to these things. At your non-ferrous plants we’ve, added air classification equipment to remove, textiles to debulk the material and to leave a higher concentrate for the separation equipment. This aids with a product purity downstream, but also has health and safety benefits in de-dusting the material before it comes into the plant. In addition to that the separation equipment, we’ve adapted that as well. One of the significant additions to the plants has been the XRT equipment, which we typically are putting online with the Eddy Currents and has allowed the plant to really push the tons per hour and still maintain a high purity of product coming out the back end. So between the Zig Zags and the XRT in combination you should be able to expect approximately a 10 ton per hour increase in plant throughput while maintaining a very high purity metallic on the ZORBA product coming off.
Val Andrews:
Awesome. Next question is, what solutions are available to bypass Chinese quotas?
Bill Close:
Well, I’ve already made reference to the XRT equipment. So the metal sorting solution really is the backbone of that and that we’re able to meet the high purity standards. You know, a 98 plus a 99% plus metallic package is very achievable with the equipment. But in addition to that, China’s been publishing specifications of expectations of how the materials are packaged. So, once produced and you’ve hit the targets in terms of cleanliness, they’ve been publishing specifications of delivering the products pre-sized, bagged in super sacks, and then tagged to identify the characteristics of the product that is in the bag. So what they’re looking for is a highly uniform package that has a defined size range, a defined metallic content and when you’re meeting specifications like this and a high level of uniformity, you don’t fall under the quota systems for a mixed ZORBA package that is all sizes and everything together.
Val Andrews:
Okay. Last question for you in this batch, what value does a metal sorting system offer?
Bill Close:
All right. So, just this week, TOMRA has been announcing a very significant development with their X-ray technology and that now they have the capability with the same standard x-ray equipment to produce a low magnesium Twitch. This is really significant because of the number of homes that the packages can go to. An XRT typically in the past had been producing a Twitch that was still inclusive of the magnesium. And there were many homes for that. But, with the ability to get the magnesium out, there are many, many, many more homes that you can go to. So it really opens up the opportunity for reaching further into the marketplace and finding your best price. Customers that have been doing the XRT, we’ve seen opportunities depending on the region and who it is that they’re selling to where they might be able to earn a nickel a pound premium on the materials. So, this is a big advancement in the technology.
Val Andrews:
Awesome. Thanks Bill. Now these next few questions will be surrounding wire chopping. Dave, we are having trouble with stainless content in our finished copper. How can we remove it?
Dave Siejka:
Yeah, so stainless really poses two problems to a wire chopping system. The first problem of stainless can increase wear it’s a hard material, so it really can, if you have large quantities of stainless, it can beat your blades up, it can beat your screens up having, which means you’ve got to change them out more frequently. And that’s just an added cost to the operation. The second issue that stainless steel poses is that it can contaminate your finished products. So in the case, and in this particular case, if finished products are the issue, you can, you can clean your stainless up by using high Gauss rare earth magnets, either in a drum pulley form or in about a belt machine form to remove that contamination. If the stainless steel is causing excessive wear to the shredder and granulation steps, you can use a combination of air classification to drop out heavy stainless, as well as the same style rare earth magnets to pull it out before it goes to your shredders and granulators.
Val Andrews:
Thanks. Next question. What’s the best/low cost way to recover more fine copper from the plastics tailing when we chop #2 ICW?
Dave Siejka:
So when I look at recovery of a copper wire from plastics, I look at it in a staged approach. So the first stage and the lowest operating cost way of recovering the copper is by instituting screens. Typically I use a two screen system. The first screen has some larger hole sizes to get rid of the largest amount of the big plastics. And the second screen drops fine copper while making a concentrated rerun package. This rerun package can be fed back into your wire chopping system and give it another chance to recover that copper. Depending on a customer’s volumes and their needs this rerun fraction could potentially be treated by either electrostatic separation, a turbo milling process, or even in some rare cases, a water table to make sure that we’re getting the most copper out of that plastics waste.
Val Andrews:
Okay. Last question in this batch. With my shredder wire we are experiencing melting on a regular basis. How can I reduce melting?
Dave Siejka:
Yeah. So a shredder wire has a lot of light, non metallics in it and a lot of plastic. It also causes a lot of wear. So the reason you experience melting in a wire chopping application is because material isn’t getting in and out of the shredding and granulation chambers quick enough. So when I hear that customers are experiencing melting, there’s a couple root causes. Number one is your screen sizes aren’t correct. Number two is you have a lot of wear on your screens and they need to be replaced. Number three is your blades are dull and you’re trying to process and this can also attribute to melting. And number four is your blade gapping. The gap between your fixed and mobile blades is too wide, so you’re tearing and ripping and causing friction instead of cutting and really all of these can contribute to excessive melting in a wire chopping application with any material.
Val Andrews:
Great. Thanks Dave. Now we’re going to head back over to Ethan for a few more questions. Has any emission testing been done on shredders with foam injection?
Ethan Willard:
Well, I know of one shredder that has been tested using foam injection. One of the biggest issues you find with any of the emission testing data that’s out there is that it’s all done on different shredders, different size shredders, different locations, different types of shredders. Some using foam injection, some using water injection and the data could really change quite a bit from, from one shredder to the next. One of the big things that plays a role in emissions is feedstock because we all know that feedstock from one shredder to the next is can vary highly and therefore the emissions coming off of it can vary quite a bit. So one of the things with foam injection is that it’s difficult to tell what kind of effect it has on the emissions coming out of a shredder. There’s no data that I’m aware of at least that compares the same exact shredder with the same exact feedstock running with a standard water injection system versus running with a foam injection system. So yes, there’s some tests that out there with shredders that have foam injection, but how it performs in relation to other systems that are out there, there’s not too much data available for that.
Val Andrews:
And we have a follow-up to that previous question. Regarding foam injection systems is the foam free of PFA’s?
Ethan Willard:
So there are companies out there that advertise environmentally friendly foam injection or the fluid for the foam injection systems. They’re not highly used much anymore. So the data is limited in general, but there are companies that do advertise environmentally friendly foam systems.
Val Andrews:
Okay. Next question. With a 500 horsepower small shredder, we mainly process sheet aluminum. What is the best downstream we should use?
Ethan Willard:
So for that size shredder, I recommend keeping it simple and if it is all a relatively pure aluminum product going into the machine, the downstream can be simple. But a lot of it depends on what your goal is for output product quality. Where are you selling the material and what are you trying to produce? At a minimum just like any other shredder, I would recommend the magnet. And then after a magnet, a screen maybe to remove fines and an Eddy Current to remove any contaminants that might, might be in the aluminum. Past that it really comes down to the finished product that you’re trying to market and what those requirements are.
Val Andrews:
Okay, last question for you. What are a few things that I can do to optimize my shredder to increase my reliability and throughput?
Ethan Willard:
So shredder optimization is really a big topic. There’s a number of different things you can do to increase reliability and throughput. The number one thing I would recommend is keep track of all your sources of downtime and take good records, take good data. Having that data can teach you a lot about what’s going on with your machine. Tracking reasons for downtime, the amount of downtime in any run. If there’s a certain type of feedstock that you see tends to create more downtime than the other. That tells you a very good story about areas to focus with your particular mill. Some other simple things to look at is hammer rotations. How often are you rotating your hammers? Do you have the right number of hammers in your machine? The routine maintenance, looking at putting together an actual schedule where you are doing routine maintenance on a regular basis and being proactive with your maintenance rather than reactive with your maintenance. Every shredder is different. Every shredder has different reasons for their throughput and their reliability. And I guess one of the things that WENDT can offer is optimization services and being able to come out and visit your shredder and look at some of the areas where there’s possible improvement.
Val Andrews:
Now I’m going to move back to Bill for some non-ferrous related questions. What solutions are available to process Zorba fines to earn intrinsic value?
Bill Close:
Alright, so this, this has been one of the bigger problems most recently in our industry. If you go back a couple of years, Zorba fines were earning the highest dollar per pound because you’re paying for the intrinsic value due to the high red metal content found in the Zorba fines, which is three or four times the red metal content of your larger Zorba package. So, quite normally at that time you were being paid a premium for the Zorba fines. That’s not the case today and as everybody knows, the Zorba fines are often sold at a discount. So, it’s been changing market expectations in terms of purity and other factors that have gone into that, that’s been creating this problem. But with the problem, it’s also been creating a huge margin opportunity. So, with going back to the x-ray topic, TOMRA has developed a new machine their X6 XRT, which is purpose built for processing Zorba fines. It is the only machine that’s in the industry that can do down to a five millimeter particle size. And, you know, it’s smaller, much smaller than any other XRT or XRF machine in the industry. The nice thing about the a X6 XRT, in addition to being able to process Zorba fines, it does great on the Zorba mids and the Zorba large as well. So it’s just a hugely flexible platform for attacking the various problems. Now, once we’re back to the Zorba fines topic, we’re able to actually get at the intrinsic value. So recognizing current market conditions where currently the Zorba fines is, selling at a discount, recognizing the current market opportunity, where the percentage of red metals is much, much higher in this feedstock. Those two things create a margin spread unlike anything else that you’re going to see and it’s a huge opportunity. So, going back to the former conversation, XRT has lots of applications for solving difficult problems, and this one in particular is one of the biggest and most exciting opportunities.
Val Andrews:
Great. What does the future state of metal recycling look like?
Bill Close:
Now this is exciting. So we’ve been working on this for awhile and incrementally, you know, we’ve been improving the climate for the shredder operators literally with the ZigZag Windsifters, de-dusting and making a cleaner air inside for the people. And you know, but, as we’re looking at some of the challenges and particularly today in a situation that everybody’s now undergoing with the COVID infections that have been going around the world, we’ve been working towards, for a long period of time, to having a hands free, no picking application for non-ferrous. So these are things that you should be talking to us about and especially today, you know, the plants still depend on the people that run these plants. But if we can be socially isolating by having a guy in a front end loader, another guy on a fork truck and another guy in an office and then sometimes coming out to do some supervision, but we’re not forcing people to congregate together in small picking huts, you know, doing manual picking labor, these are the problems that we can help solve. So, you need to be talking to us. We’ve got great solutions. We can reduce the labor om the plants, we can improve the health and safety for your employees and we can maintain a very high purity of product.
Val Andrews:
Alright, last question for you, Bill. How do recyclers know whether they should invest in equipment?
Bill Close:
Alright. For those of you that have done business with WENDT in the past, you already know the answer to that. We’re a very data driven company. We’ve been very blessed to have the opportunity to demonstrate equipment, to folks at our Tech Center. We’ve built seven or eight different versions of our Tech Center, each time we’re taking on the topics of the day. In addition to being able to show you mainstream problems, and demonstrate effectively what we can do, it’s always set up to solve the difficult R&D problems of the day. And so part of that exciting news is that, you know, WENDT is going to be looking to the future one more time, we have plans for putting in a brand new Tech Center and we’re going to retool and, you know, look at all the problems that we’re looking at and been describing in this conversation today. So, come test with us today and come test with us tomorrow. We’d be happy to show you our capabilities are and have a conversation about what problems you’re trying to solve and bring some solutions to the table.
Val Andrews:
Let’s switch back to Dave for some more wire chopping questions. Can I process copper and aluminum through a wire chopping line at the same time?
Dave Siejka:
Yeah, so there’s a lot of cables that have both copper and aluminum in it, specifically, URD type cables. So, you can make a separation when either copper or aluminum are present in small quantities. However, you’re not going to make a finished product of both commodities. So, if you’re talking about, you know, can I run a number one insulated copper wire cable and also run insulated aluminum at the same time, my suggestion would be to keep these products separate in order to make sure that we’re making the highest purity output products possible.
Val Andrews:
Okay, and last question, when switching from #1 copper to number #2 copper and back, what is the best way to prevent cross contamination?
Dave Siejka:
Yeah, so my suggestions are, so I have a few suggestions here. So first off, when you’re planning out your monthly production schedule, I would plan out to run my highest grade copper as my first process. By the time you’re out of that, then your next highest grade. And then when you run out of that material, then your lowest grade and so on and so forth. That helps to prevent cross contamination throughout your monthly production. However, when we go from running our lowest grade back to running our number grade the next month there’s a few different ways that you can prevent cross-contamination. The first is to shut down, spend about a shift going through vacuuming out conveyors and tables and doing a full in depth cleaning. And again, this is an eight hour process. What you can do that’s a little bit more time friendly and helps you get up and running quicker is to just do a purge run. So when you switch over, you put brand new bins under all of the outputs, you then run your number one material. Typically we’re talking, you know, 1000-2000 pounds of material and what you’ll see during this purge is you’ll see a dirty output and eventually you’ll see all of the contamination kind of go away. At the point where you see no more contamination coming out in your finished products, you switch your bins out, put brand new fresh bins in and now your system is completely purged. You don’t have any metal contamination and you can go back to running your number one, your high grade material the same way you were before.
Val Andrews:
Great, thanks Dave and Ethan and Bill, those are all the questions we have.
Bill Close:
Alright, but I would like to hop in here and I know this wasn’t planned for, but I’d like to ask a question of one of our BDM’s as well. So Ethan, I’ve got a question for you. What I’d like you to do is if you wouldn’t mind commenting on the value proposition of doing business with WENDT. I think we differentiate ourselves really nicely in the industry and if you could just kind of walk us through the process and what differentiates us, I think that would be helpful to folks listening.
Ethan Willard:
Okay. Alright, good question Bill. So, WENDT has had a long history of doing projects around North America, with a number of customers, both big and small. With that over 40 years of experience, we’ve had a number of really awesome projects and experiences that range everywhere from permitting on projects to design of plants to obviously manufacturing and designing of equipment and then the installation that follows that. So the big thing with WENDT is we have a very large team in the office comprised of both the applications experts like ourselves and also project managers, engineers, everywhere from electrical to mechanical and manufacturing engineers all on staff, to make a project really come to fruition quickly, efficiently and on budget. There’s a number of tools that we use throughout the company to facilitate it. Scheduling softwares, Microsoft Teams is one that we just recently upgraded to for communication across the company. And we have a large staff with, with many, many years of experience from everything, from shredders to non-ferrous separation and wire chopping and even beyond. In addition to that, we have a number of strategic partners that we’ve partnered with throughout the years and have had now a very long standing and successful relationship with. TOMRA on the non-ferrous side, MTB on the chopping side, Bowe Rotors and APC Technologies on the ferrous side for rotors and emission control equipment. And a number of other strategic partners, for various parts of our business. One of the things WENDT likes to focus on is applications and projects or systems that are right for our customer’s needs. Every single thing, every single project that we work on is different and it’s tuned specifically to meet what our customers are looking to do, whether that’s a specific throughput, specific output products, whatever that may be, we’ve set ourselves up to be able to meet whatever the needs are of the market and of our customers.
Bill Close:
So to that, I would like to add just one more thing. That a lot of folks are reaching out to us, from the perspective of developing their business strategies. Quite often, I’ve been looking at six, seven, eight different yards for a large publicly traded company where they’ve asked me to help them with their business strategy and identify opportunities of where they can make improvements. So if you’re not in a position today, to be beginning a project, you certainly are in a position today to be thinking about what your next steps are and planning and you need to be talking to us. So anyways, I’d encourage you folks to reach out and we’d be happy to help.
Val Andrews:
Great, that was an awesome addition. I do want to thank everyone that submitted their questions and hope that we were able to provide you with the answers you were looking for. If anyone has additional questions or would like a more in depth answer to any of the questions you’ve heard here today, please feel free to reach out to us at sales@wendtcorp.com. Thank you and hope everybody has a good day.
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