Material Recovery Facility

A Material Recovery Facility is often referred to as a ‘MRF’ and is generically a facility that sorts, grades and prepares waste fractions suitable for onward dispatch to a Reprocessor.

Picture of Machinex DMR MRF, courtesy of Machinex, all rights reserved

Overview

A Material Recovery Facility is often referred to as a ‘MRF’ and is generically a facility that sorts, grades and prepares waste fractions suitable for onward dispatch to a Reprocessor. Many also refer to a MRF as a Material Recycling Facility, which is not strictly true in that the MRF separates the material for onward recycling rather than recycling the material in its own right.

Types of MRF

There are essentially three broad types of MRF:

• "Clean" MRFs that accept materials from source separation schemes and Dry Mixed Recyclables (DMR).
• "Dirty" MRFs/Waste to Fuel MRF which extract recyclables from mixed MSW and Commercial Waste streams and are generally more focused on producing a Waste Derived Fuel (WDF).
• Material specific MRFs for example:
  • Construction and Demolition Waste and skip wastes
  • Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
  • Plastic materials and purpose designed PRFs (Plastics Recovery Facility or Plastics Recycling Facility)

"Clean" MRFs

"Clean" MRFs accept materials from source separation schemes and Dry Mixed Recyclables (DMR). A pictorial overview of one type layout/configuration is shown below for multiple streams of DMR, whereas a single stream or twin stream input would have a far more straightforward layout:

	1. Material Feed - often delivered via a Bag Breaker
	2a.Trommel/Trommel Screen - normally used to separate off the larger, lighter mixed paper and cardboard fractions from the other materials
	2b.Ballistic Separator - normally used to separate 2-dimensional light and flat items (such as paper and cardboard) from 3-dimensional heavier rigid items such as glass bottles and cans
	3a.Magnetic Separator - used to separate steel cans/ferrous metals
	3b.Air Separator/Air Classifier - used to separate heavy from light materials, in this case to remove contamination from the glass fraction
	4.Eddy Current Separator - used to separate aluminium cans/non-ferrous metals
	5.NIR Optical Sorting - Near Infra Red (NIR) light is used to separate materials, often focused on different plastic types/polymers

The MRF Code of Practice applies to all 'Qualifying MRFs' which are those all those MRFs that receive more than 1,000 tonnes per annum of primarily DMR materials from households and other sources with a similar composition. A list of these MRFs and associated map is set out below which are, on the whole, "Clean" MRFs.

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"Dirty MRFs"

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Material Specific MRFs

Construction and Demolition Waste and Skip Wastes

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Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment

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Plastic Materials and Purpose Designed PRFs

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