To: Professor Jack
From: Paul Brinks
Subject: Padnos Tour
Padnos is a Holland based company with branches in Grand Rapids, Lansing, Ludington, Hastings and Ionia. The company motto is “Recycling to preserve our environment”. This is exactly what they are doing with recycled products ranging from paper and plastic to many types of metals. The memo will focus on the Holland facility and its hot briquetting operation.
The overall idea behind the briquetting operation is to turn metal borings and turnings into a dense, reusable form. The process starts by pre-processing metal turnings. Turnings are usually long and tangly. This makes them difficult to run through the briquetting equipment. To help the material flow through the briquetting equipment, the turnings are shredded into a fine sand like structure. This process is not required for cast iron borings because borings by nature have a sand like structure. From this point the granular metal is fed into a rotating furnace. The metal is heated and dropped into a rotating briquette press. The output product is a brick with dimensions of L=5”, W=2” and T=1”. The material composition of the bricks can be changed by adding different types of turnings and borings. The material composition is usually set by the foundries and steel mills that purchase the briquettes. SPC is carried out on batches of bricks to ensure the customer is receiving the different types of bricks requested.
The cutting oils and fluids that are used in the turning and boring operations can lead to environmental issues. The main issue is ground water contamination. Padnos was pro-active in dealing with this issue by installing a water recovery system. The system consists of a plastic blanket spread under the briquetting equipment. The plastic is then covered by a porous gravel to protect the plastic blanket and aid in drainage. From here the water is processed in an on site water purification system.
Padnos is a world class recycler with many different recycling capacities. It is also nice to see that Padnos is not doing it at the expense of our environment.