With absorbent hygiene products (AHP), primarily nappies, amounting to a massive 1.1 million tonnes of the UK waste arisings, Manchester and Redcar-based process engineering design consultants, Haden Freeman Ltd, are undertaking a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) study for an innovative process to recycle AHPs recovering valuable plastic and fibres on behalf of Knowaste Ltd.
The Bromsgrove-based subsidiary of Knowaste International was the first UK company to recycle AHPs in 2011 at its development plant in West Bromwich. This plant closed in 2013 having fulfilled its purpose as a project to test the technology and evaluate the market opportunities for recyclables/ plastic and fibres created from the process.
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The new FEED study will be for a proposed far larger £14m recycling plant to be located in Hayes, West London, which will recycle almost 100% of AHPs with the plastic destined to make waste containers and the fibre a high quality pet litter. This new plant will utilise patented technology and know-how that Knowaste has developed over the last 10years.
Roy Brown, Chief Executive of Knowaste, explains how the new study will introduce an innovative element which makes the process economically viable, “In essence, whilst we always had a market for the recycled plastic liners of nappies, incontinence pads and other AHP’s, the absorbent fibres within these products were still unwanted either being incinerated or going into low value products such as construction fibre board. We now have the technology to convert these cleaned and sterilised fibres into valuable pet litter producing a complete process, including reusing the heat produced to dry materials.”
“It’s a fantastic step forward which will hopefully drastically reduce the amount of AHPs going into landfill sites and, if our application is successful, we would start production at Hayes in early 2017, providing both environmental benefits and employment opportunities within the area.”
Stuart Dow, Technical Director of Haden Freeman Ltd, explained the project, “We do a great many of such front end studies to ascertain the feasibility and costs of projects. The Knowaste project is typical involving the modelling of a process to see what it needs to take this up in scale to sustainable level and what costs are involved. The study involves many engineering disciplines from civil, structural, mechanical and electrical right down to instrumentation design to see what the optimum size plant will be for this site.”
Haden Freeman Ltd is a major process engineering consultancy and multi-disciplinary resource for the chemical industry. Established in Manchester since 1984, the company now has offices in Southampton, Qatar and Redcar, which enables them to provide a local service to clients in these areas with a number of their engineers based at client sites, supported from headquarters by a fully integrated digital infrastructure.
For further details, please contact Stuart Dow, Technical Director by email, sdow@hadenfreeman.com.
