GEOCELL goes ‘independent’ with glass powder plant

Austria – Austrian firm BT-Wolfgang Binder has constructed a plant for GEOCELL in upper Austria to produce foam glass ballast – which is described as an ‘excellent insulating material’.

With a discharge rate of 6 tons of broken waste glass per hour, the facility includes raw material discharge, a drying and milling plant, and a screening and classifying plant, comments BT-Wolfgang Binder. Waste glass of 0 to 60 mm is ground in a ball mill to a glass powder of less than 100 micrometres, which is then ‘intermediately stored’ in a silo or fed to a foam glass kiln by a pneumatic conveyor system.

The complete plant is operated by an electronic control system supplied by BT-Anlagenbau, part of the BT Group holding. Owing to the abrasive nature of the glass, machine parts that contact the material ‘are lined with a ceramic covering, which significantly improves the service life of the expendable parts’, says BT-Wolfgang Binder.

Prior to the installation of its own glass powder production plant, GEOCELL sourced raw material from the market. Plans to ‘become independent’ were drawn up in 2012 and the new facility was completed some 10 months later.

For more information, visit: www.btw-binder.com and www.geocell-schaumglas.eu