ReCyclone Chews Up Trash and Spits Out Value

Called the Recyclone™, it is nothing like ReCyclone, the hip-hop rapper from Canada.

PowerMaster's infinitely adjustable, eco-friendly gyroscopic grinder comes in dozens of different configurations and can process anything from agricultural residue to concrete.

"The amount of garbage the world is generating on a daily basis is a huge problem, but it doesn’t have to be," said Paul Dole, director of special projects with PowerMaster.

"With a combination of waste to energy, plastic to diesel, and a composting plant, you can get rid of nearly all of it, and that’s exactly what our ReCyclone is designed to do," he said. "With the ReCyclone, you can turn virtually all trash into something reuseable."

The Recyclone can turn e-waste into powder, making it easier to recover precious metals used to make the circuit boards. (Photo courtesy Powermaster)

The ReCyclone grinds up inorganic waste to be recycled or burned for electricity; turns agricultural waste into compost and organic fertilizer, and remediates landfills by reducing their size, eliminating odors and greenhouse gases.

Powered by a single 200 to 400 hundred horse power electric motor that rotates the central shaft assembly, the ReCyclone's moving arm spins as fast as 650 miles per hour.

It can reduce any material to manageable size in one pass through the machine - household garbage, yard waste, glass, incinerator ash, oil waste sludges, plastics, paints, contaminated soils, and tires.

Dole says Powermaster works with companies "that exploit the creative opportunities in other people's junk, sparing the environment in the process."

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in 2005, used or unwanted electronics amounted to about 2.2 million tons. Of that, about 1.9 million tons were discarded in landfills, and only 379,000 tons were recycled.

The ReCyclone can take these mountains of obsolete electronic devices and grind them into a powder, allowing easier recovery of the gold and platinum used in computer boards and chips.

One metric ton of circuit boards can contain between 80 and 1,500 grams of gold, which is up to 800 times the concentration of gold contained in gold ore mined in the United States.

"The ReCyclone can get more gold out of electronic devices than from a gold mine, and it does so using an eco-friendly process," says Dole.

"Not only is the ReCyclone great for reducing industrial waste, it can eliminate the tons of household waste being generated every day," said Lila York, president of PowerMaster. "If you look at your typical bag of household garbage, you’ll find that it’s mostly organics like paper, banana peels, and other food waste, plus some inorganic materials like hard and soft plastics, metal, wood, and glass.

"If you run that through our ReCyclone," she said, "you can turn the organic materials into dirt, grind the plastics up to be used for diesel fuel, and convert the metals, wood, and glass into a form that can be used for electricity."

The machine has the ability to convert waste into small fuel pellets which burn better than coal, and it can grind up corn and corn stalks to be used for ethanol. The ReCyclone can be custom programmed for all types of waste and is adjustable for any output size.

"The world is running out of landfill space - many states and even some countries now have to export their garbage because they don't have any place to put it," said York. "And with millions of tons of waste generated daily, the problem is only going to get worse. At PowerMaster, we're committed to doing something about that and cleaning up the planet."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.