Page 52 from: September 2014

52 September 2014

Enval’s
field of dreams

Substantial quan-

tities of aluminium-

containing laminated packag-

ing come on to the market every year,

most of which quickly becomes part of the

waste stream because of the lack of an effective recy-

cling solution. But in the last few years, a UK company has

been pursuing a viable response to this problem – a mission that

recently culminated in the unveiling of a commercial-scale recy-

cling facility. In the longer term, however, the firm’s ambitions lie

in equipment sales rather than in processing.

The world has been beating a path to the door of Enval since the UK company ful-
filled a long-time ambition of building a com-

mercial-scale facility for recycling perhaps

some of the most pervasive but awkward forms

of consumer goods packaging, namely flexible

plastic and aluminium laminate drinks/petfood

pouches, filter coffee bags, toothpaste tubes and

the inner layers of drinks cartons.

Situated a few kilometres north-west of Enval’s

Cambridge headquarters, on an airfield at

Alconbury, the new facility features a continuous

process plant based on the company’s award-

winning microwave induced pyrolysis system

for recovering valuable materials, notably alu-

minium, from foil-containing flexible packag-

ing. The technology separates the material into

its constituent components, producing 100%

clean aluminium and hydrocarbons that can be

used as fuel or chemical feedstock. As opposed

to incineration, pyrolysis takes place without the

combustion of the material, avoiding the pro-

duction of greenhouse gases or toxic emissions.

‘Last stages of commissioning’
The Alconbury facility began equipment testing

and basic trials at the start of the year and ‘is

currently in the last stages of commissioning’,

explains Enval’s business development director

David Boorman. Although the focus will be on

processing post-manufacturing material from

companies making the packaging targeted by

Enval, some post-consumer volumes will also

be tackled – providing tangible proof, says

Boorman, that the process is sufficiently robust

to handle post-consumer waste with ‘conven-

tional levels of contamination’.

Some of this post-consumer feed is coming

from the de-pulping of drinks cartons; other

post-consumer material Enval would expect to

see includes the aforementioned fruit juice

pouches, wet petfood pouches, toothpaste

tubes and coffee bags – all of which have an

aluminium layer at least 6 microns thick.

Packaging is first introduced into a shredder to

reduce it to pieces some 2-3 cm in diameter.

These are then transferred to a microwave oven

in which the temperature is sufficient to pyro-

lyse the plastics without melting the alumini-

um. As a result, 100% of the metal can be recov-

ered in flake form for subsequent conversion

into 10 cm diameter pucks or briquettes, if

C O M P A N Y P R O F I L E By Ian Martin

Enval’s managing director Dr Carlos Ludlow-Palafox (left) and busi-
ness development director David Boorman.

Pioneering plant technology

RI-7 Enval.indd 52 28-08-14 16:56