Revisit to Mill Farm Recycling’s Static HAAS Wood Recycling Plant

In April 2019 CRJ Services, in partnership with HAAS Recycling Systems GmbH, commissioned a full turn-key wood recycling plant at Mill Farm Recycling. After three years of successful operation, we return to speak with Will Ainsworth – Partner at Mill Farm Recycling to see how the plant has been performing.
 

Following several years of processing their biomass products with a series of mobile shredders and screeners, Mill Farm required a static wood recycling plant that could accommodate their increased processing volumes and deliver an improved product in a range of specifications.
 

In collaboration with CRJ Services, and following extensive planning and development, HAAS designed and installed a bespoke static wood recycling plant. The plant comprises a star-screen, hammermill, eddy current separator, oscillating deck screen and a series of chain conveyors that transport and dispense the finished products into storage bays. The new plant is currently processing approximately 8,000 tonnes a year of grade A wood. Throughput is circ. 30 ton per hour dependant on moisture of the wood.
 

Commissioned in April 2019, the plant has now been successfully operating for three years. We took this opportunity to visit Will Ainsworth – Partner at Mill Farm Recycling to get his thoughts on the performance of the plant and discuss how this has improved their operation.
 

“The plant has performed well with good throughput. The plant is delivering 120% increase in production compared to our mobile setup. Our mobile plant required to be blown down and fuelled up daily which doesn't sound like a big issue, but it can sometimes take well over an hour every day out of your production time, we currently blow down our plant once a week which takes approximately a couple of hours.”

With their mobile setup, producing different product specs involved the exchange of trommel drums and screening baskets within their screeners and shredders.
 

Will stated, “The access to the hammermill hammers and screen is very quick and easy. Changing screens within the Oscillating screen takes less than 5 minutes to change each section, and we are able to create our 3 product sizes and still screen for oversize at the same time.”

One of the defining features of the new plant is the longevity of the wear parts, and ease of maintenance. “The part we have changed the most frequent is the dust seals around the chip screen which we change approx. every 9 months. Apart from that the plant is fairly low maintenance with the only other wear parts changed to date being 1 full set of hammers and a row of 5 milling plates for the hammer mill. We have however hard-faced the plates and will use them again. We do renew the hard facing on the milling bed and the screen about once every 2 months. We bought a quantity of parts when we purchased the plant, this has meant that we have most of the required parts on the floor ready which has reduced downtime to a minimum.”
 

The HAAS plant also includes a dust extraction system which removes dust from various sections of the plant, “The dust extraction system reduces the dust around the plant and building to a minimum which is great for not only the working conditions but fire safety too.”
 

Aside from the increase in production rates, the new static plant has also decreased energy consumption compared to the mobile plant. Being electrically driven, the plant has also reduced Mill Farms reliance of diesel, an aspect that has become very economical with the recent rise in fuel costs.