The sorting plant

The sorting plant of Moraro

45° 55' 7.075'' N, 13° 30' 0.091'' E

45.9186319021, 13.50002540307

The sorting plant in Moraro can process up to about 20,000 tons/year of waste consisting of:

• Dry from separate collection, made up of plastics and cans
• Paper and cardboard
• Glass

The plant receives waste from all the municipalities of the Province of Gorizia and from the municipalities of Duino - Aurisina, Sgonico - Zgonik, and Monrupino located in the province of Trieste.

How it works

The incoming waste first passes through the weighing station, which records the load, the type of waste, and the municipality of origin. The registration of the vehicles is managed by the staff in charge, who verifies the nature of the waste contained in the truck, proceeds with the registration of the entry documentation, and sends the vehicle for unloading.

Each type of recyclable waste is unloaded in separate areas by material and subsequently sent for processing.

The incoming waste unloaded from the truck is loaded using a wheeled loader into the bag opener previously set for the correct dosing of the sorting line, which is ensured, for each type of material, by setting specific working parameters.

At the exit of the can opener, the material is first divided by the ballistic screen that separates it by size; the fine material is collected in a special box and subsequently removed along with the non-recyclable fraction, the medium-sized material is sent to the automatic sorting line, while the larger-sized material is sent to the manual sorting cabins.

The automatic selection line, arranged on an elevated platform, consists of a conveyor belt that runs under three readers that identify the different types of materials using optical scanners, which separate them with the aid of jets of compressed air. These devices are equipped with control computers for setting different selection programs and can be used flexibly, precisely choosing the product to be separated.

The quality control of the material selected by the optical reader is ensured by an operator who constantly checks and manually corrects any errors of the equipment.

At the end of the sorting line, there is a device capable of separating aluminum using the principle of induced currents (a magnet that repels rather than attracts).

Once the different materials are selected, they are collected in special concrete boxes placed under the selection line.

From the box, the material flows to the collecting belt that feeds the pressing line where, with the intervention of an operator, the pressing parameters are set for each type of material to define the length of the bales and the pushing pressure for weight optimization in accordance with the requirements of the recyclers.

Subsequently, the bales are sent to the warehouse and positioned by material type in a specific area, waiting to be sent to the final destination centers. The exit of the materials is recorded and documented by the weighing office.

The Moraro plant selects and sends to recovery centers paper, cardboard, plastic, ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, and glass (which does not undergo treatment but is only stored and periodically shipped to the processing plant). All materials processed by the plant are subjected to commodity analysis to verify the quality parameters imposed by the recycling centers to which each material is sent. These analyses aim to determine the percentage of improper materials present in the bales, a parameter that determines the quality range of the material and the corresponding economic contribution recognized for the processing carried out under the ANCI - CONAI agreement.

The plant is equipped with the following main auxiliary systems:

• weighing system for vehicles entering and exiting,
• compressed air production plant for powering optical readers,
• dust extraction system with reduction through sleeve filter,
• collection of leachate with accumulation in an underground tank and subsequent disposal at authorized centers,
• fire protection system with automatic detection of fire sources,
• photovoltaic system on the roofs of buildings, for the production and sale to the grid of electricity.

The handling of materials is done with rubber-tired loaders or forklifts.

For a couple of years now, at the sorting plant, the storage and sorting of glass collected with street containers has also been carried out.