Ground has broken on Palmetto Commerce Parkway to build a material recovery facility (MRF) in North Charleston, S.C. Machinex was chosen to provide this turnkey, single-stream system that will be in operation by late summer of 2018.

With a capacity of 25 tons per hour, the 57,000-sq.-ft. will receive more than 50,000 tons per year of recyclables from Charleston County curbside collection. For the past two years, the county has been shipping its recyclables to Horry County for processing while planning for the new MRF.

The system includes advanced sorting technologies, such as a drum feeder and a bag opener, and a series of separators; a MACH OCC to sort the cardboard, a MACH One News to separate residential papers, and a Mach Ballistic to be used as a finishing screen to increase the quality on mixed fiber. Two MACH Hyspec optical sorters will be installed; the first one is a dual eject unit that will sort PET bottles and fiber in the same machine while the second one is a dual channel unit that will sort HDPE on the first channel and do an HDPE color sort on the second channel.

Also included in the system are ferrous and non-ferrous separators, a light fraction separator on glass, an aspiration system linked to a closed door baler for plastic film, and two trash compactors for system residue.

"We have worked closely in partnership with the county to design a system that handles their needs of today while maintaining flexibility for future changes in the material stream,” Machinex Eastern Region Sales Manager Rusty Angel said in a statement. “This MRF will be the largest, most-advanced recycling center in the entire state of South Carolina and Machinex is happy to be a part of that progress.”