Environment and Recycling
The environment and recycling sector manages diverse waste streams while recovering valuable materials and protecting natural resources. Reliable instrumentation handles challenging conditions to maximize recovery rates and ensure emissions compliance.
Overview
The environment and recycling industry is central to managing waste streams, recovering valuable materials, and protecting natural resources. Processing facilities handle diverse and often unpredictable input materials ranging from municipal waste to industrial byproducts. Reliable instrumentation is essential for monitoring sorting processes, controlling material recovery operations, and ensuring emissions compliance. Level measurement in storage bunkers, processing vessels, and output silos must handle challenging conditions including dust, moisture, and highly variable material properties. As circular economy principles gain momentum, recycling operations require increasingly precise process control to maximize recovery rates and minimize environmental impact.
Industry Challenges
Key challenges we help address
Monitoring hazardous waste levels in enclosed storage areas
Preventing landfill leachate contamination of groundwater
Managing incinerator feed rates for complete combustion
Tracking emissions to meet increasingly strict regulations
Measuring material purity in recycling sorting processes
Operating sensors in corrosive flue gas environments
Solutions for This Industry
Use Cases
Explore specific scenarios and challenges in this industry
Dewatering column
Environment and Recycling
The waste oil is heated to a temperature of 105 °C in the lower section of the column. Here, the water evaporates and is pumped away after it condenses. After reaching the appropriate temperature, the oil is transported through pipes to the upper part of the column, where the remaining water vaporises. For optimal dewatering, a defined level is required in the column. As the oil surface is very turbulent due to the action of pumps and heating, making level measurement directly inside the column practically impossible. For that reason it is done in a bypass tube.
Dewatering wells in open cast mining
Environment and Recycling
In open cast mining, the groundwater levels must be continuously reduced to protect the mining area from flooding and the excavation walls from instability due to water pressure. A large number of dewatering wells with submersible pumps are kept in operation for this purpose. A continuous water flow prevents the pump shaft from blocking due to the effects of hardening clay/iron oxide deposits. To regulate the pump output, precise level measurement is required in each of the up to 750 m deep wells.
Flue gas scrubber
Environment and Recycling
Flue gas from waste incineration must be cleaned before it is released into the environment. Flue gas scrubbers do this by removing acidic gas components such as sulphur dioxide. Lime water is used as the washing solution and it is sprayed in against the flow of the gas. The lime deposits filtered out of the washing water are used as gypsum, e.g. for the production of plasterboard. To ensure a continuous scrubbing process, a constant level in the scrubbing tower is required.
Gauge station
Environment and Recycling
Accurate monitoring of the river level is an important prerequisite to be able to react quickly and correctly in the event of a flood. Visual, on-site level monitoring requires great effort, particularly for facilities in remote areas.
Incinerator
Environment and Recycling
To ensure that the waste burns completely, temperatures up to 1000 °C must be maintained. For this purpose, large amounts of primary air from below and secondary air from above are blown in. Air quantity and air pressure must be precisely measured. Also an optimum waste layer thickness on the combustion grate is required for uniform combustion.
Incinerator feed chute
Environment and Recycling
After the crane system lifts the waste from the waste bunker and drops it to the feed chute, in the lower part of the chute, a hydraulic piston pushes the waste onto the combustion grate. It is important that waste in the chute is always at an optimal level and uniformly distributed. This prevents air from leaking into the furnace and ensures a constant supply of fuel for combustion. For that reason the minimum level in the feed chute has to be monitored and the resulting data displayed to the crane operator.
Ready to Transform Your Environment and Recycling Operations?
Get in touch with our team to discuss how we can help optimize your operations with our industry-specific solutions.
Contact Us