Sorting facility

The Moraro sorting facility

45° 55' 7,075'' N, 13° 30' 0.091'' E

45.9186319021, 13.50002540307

The Moraro sorting facility can annually treat up to about 20,000 tons of waste consisting of:

• dry waste coming from separate waste collection, i. e. plastics and cans
• paper and cardboard
• glass

This facility 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 reaches the weighing station where the weight, the type of waste and the municipality of origin are registered. The registration of the vehicles is managed by members of staff who check the nature of the waste contained in the truck, register the entry documentation and then send the vehicle to the unloading area.

Each type of recyclable waste is unloaded in a separate area - depending on the type of material - and then sent to processing.

The waste unloaded from the truck is loaded by a wheel loader into a bag opener. The latter is set to receive the correct quantity of waste from the selection line, and specific parameters are set for each type of material.

When leaving the bag opener, the material is divided for the first time by the ballistic screen, which sorts the waste by size: finer-sized material is collected in a special box and then removed, together with the non-recyclable fraction; medium-sized material is sent to the automatic sorting line; and larger-sized material is sent to the cabins of the manual sorting line.

The automatic sorting line, located on a raised surface, consists of a conveyor belt that runs under three readers which identify the different types of materials by means of an optical scanner and separate them with the aid of compressed air jets. This equipment is provided with regulating computers which set the different selection programs and have a flexible use, and allows to choose with precision the product to be separated.

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

An instrument capable of separating aluminium is placed at the end of the selection line; this instrument is based on the principle of induced currents (its magnet repels rather than attracts).

Once selected, the materials are collected in special concrete boxes placed below the selection line.

From the boxes, the material is then sent to the collector belt that feeds the pressing line where a member of staff sets the pressing parameters for each type of material in order to establish the length of the bales and the thrust pressure thus optimizing the weight, in accordance with what recyclers require.

The bales are then sent to the warehouse and arranged by type of material in a specific area, waiting to be sent to their final destination centres. The output of the materials is recorded and documented by the weighing office.

The Moraro plant selects and sends paper, cardboard, plastic, ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals and glass to the recycling centres (these materials do not undergo any treatment but are only stored and periodically sent to the transformation plant). All the materials treated by the plant are analysed to verify the quality parameters imposed by the recycling centres to which each material is sent. These analyses are aimed at determining the percentage of inappropriate materials in the bales, a parameter that determines the quality of the material and the related economic value recognized for the processing carried out under the ANCI - CONAI agreement.

The plant is equipped with the following auxiliary systems:

• weighing system for incoming and outgoing vehicles;
• compressed air production plant to feed the optical readers;
• dust extraction system with abatement through bag filter;
• percolation water collection in an underground tank and subsequent disposal in authorized centres;
• fire prevention system with automatic fire detection system;
• photovoltaic system on the roof of the buildings, for the production and sale of electricity to the network.

Materials are moved by means of wheel loaders and forklifts.

For a couple of years the glass collected in street bells has been sorted and stored in the Moraro selection plant.