WO1999064327A1

WO1999064327A1 - Waste processing apparatus

Info

Publication number: WO1999064327A1
Application number: PCT/ES1999/000171
Authority: WO
Inventors: Juan José GUERRERO PADRON
Original assignee: Ingenieria, Diseño Y Analisis, S.L.
Priority date: 1998-06-10
Filing date: 1999-06-09
Publication date: 1999-12-16

Abstract

The waste processing apparatus is a new type of household apparatus intended to classify, compact and package urban solid waste materials, facilitating the storage and classification of said residues; these operations have to be performed domestically as a consequence of the new laws on urban solid residues coming into force in all European countries. The apparatus can be used for domestic and industrial purposes. It reduces considerably the volume of the waste materials collected by the waste collecting services through compaction and high quality classification with a view to the recycling of raw materials.

Description

DESCRIPTION

GARBAGE PROCESSOR DEVICE

The garbage processing apparatus is a new type of appliance that aims at the classification, compaction and packaging of solid waste.

Its intended use is domestic (home or community of neighbors) or industrial (bars, restaurants, hospitals, food processing companies, other industrial companies and places of work or recreation in which this type of waste is generated).

Currently the state of the art of devices similar to this, object of the patent, is very incipient. Four types described below have been detected:

1.- Waste classifiers. They are bins or garbage containers that have two or more compartments with different colored bags for the storage of waste.

2 - Industrial compactors. They are machines that work in an industrial field that consist, fundamentally, of a hopper through which the waste is introduced and a press that compresses and then packages them, taking out, once these operations have been carried out, a bullet.

3.- Industrial crushers. They consist of a waste admission hopper and a crusher then composed of a set of propellers with blades in the form of blades that rotate in opposition crush the waste they receive from the hopper. Normally they are arranged in a small structure that allow the coupling of a conventional garbage container, in which the entire crushing process falls by gravity.

4.- Domestic compactors. Several models of Swiss origin that the company E.R.L. Distribuidores Medioambiental, S.L. from Madrid,

SUBSTITUTE SHEET (RULE 26) consisting of household appliances with capacities of 40 to 232 liters, which reduce - by means of compaction the garbage that is generated in the home.

The new appliance object of this patent combines the following capacities: classification, compaction and packaging of solid waste, so that all the qualities of the devices described above are included in a single product, so that as a consequence of its use, the garbage they will be classified according to the type of waste from their place of origin and also, compacted and packaged. Thanks to the classification, a large workload that exists today in the separation plants will be avoided, where currently this operation has to be done by hand.

By compacting it is achieved that the frequency of your deposit in containers for collection decreases, because in homes, for example, this operation will not be necessary to do it every day.

This will affect two things: the first is that the area beaten by each collection truck will be greater than at present and the second is that the collection time will decrease, with the consequent savings in material, maintenance, fuel and working hours.

The packaging, in addition to having obvious advantages in terms of collection and classification (color packaging according to the type of waste), has great sanitary advantages, avoiding bad odors and therefore, isolation from the action of insects, rodents and other parasites.

To carry out this task, the operation of the machine can be explained through a Main Flow Operations and several Auxiliary Operations. The Main Flow operation begins with the admission of the waste entrance and ends with its packaging and expulsion. The other operations, as the name implies, are intended to assist and provide the necessary support to the Main Flow Operation.

Figure 1 is a schematic description of the Garbage Processor, which details the Main Flow Operations. Six numbered operations of 1 are indicated

SUBSTITUTE SHEET (RULE 26) to 6. The 1 refers to the admission of solid waste into the machine's input hopper. The number 2 indicates the pressing of the waste. The 3 indicates the extraction of the liquids that appear when compacting. Operation 4 refers to the classification of the waste once pressed. 5 refers to the storage of the pressed residue in its corresponding bag. The 6 indicates the packaging and expulsion of the bag with the waste inside.

Operation begins when the user is going to throw a type of waste into the inlet or hopper of the appliance (1). These wastes must be of a homogeneous class, for example, glass or organic or plastics or metals, etc. To have access to the admission of such waste, the user must make the previous selection corresponding to the class to be thrown into the machine. This operation is done by pressing a button that will indicate to the device the type of waste it will accept. Once this is done, the upper lid is automatically opened, exposing the hopper on which the user drops the waste. The hopper is on top of the compactor (2), which once it has received them begins its pressing process that may or may not include prior crushing according to models. During this compaction the extraction and evacuation of liquids (3) is carried out by a sanitary sewer system. Under the compactor there is a battery of bags (normally three, but their number will depend on the model) with its upper part open that admits compacted waste. The sorting operation (4) is done when the compactor drops the compacted residue without liquids into the appropriate bag.

Then comes the storage operation (5) in which the bags are kept closed, waiting for new fillings, until the maximum filling is detected in one of them, then the last operation is the one of the packaging and expulsion (6). In this operation, the bag in question is closed at the top by means of heat sealing and ejected. This last operation can be produced by reaching the maximum filling in the bag, because the user decides to press the corresponding button or because the maximum storage time has elapsed since it began to fill, data that the machine will know when doing the operations Installation initials

SUBSTITUTE SHEET (RULE 26) The operation of the machine has been described and for this the Operations of the Main Flow that have been:

• Selection of the type of waste • Admission (1)

• Compaction (2)

• Extraction and evacuation of liquids (3)

• Classification (4)

• Storage (5) • Packaging and ejection (6)

As indicated before, this flow requires auxiliary operations to operate. These are:

• Temporary opening and closing of bags. This operation starts (opening) on the bag that will receive the waste from the compactor. Once these have been received, the bag is temporarily closed to avoid, essentially, bad odors until the next filling operation in which it will reopen.

• Cleaning the hopper and compactor. This operation is carried out automatically in order to eliminate traces of liquids and small solid particles that may cause odors in the machine. It is carried out according to the decision adopted by the user: at the end of each operation or after a set of them. Cleaning is carried out by means of a pressurized water device that may be previously heated or not. In addition to this cleaning, the Garbage Processor may have, depending on the model, an interior ultraviolet lamp that directly illuminates the hopper and the compactor, as the areas are directly exposed to waste, in order to eliminate bacteria and other kinds of microorganisms.

SUBSTITUTE SHEET (RULE 26) • Bag feeding. The battery bags under the compactor are replaced one by one through this operation. For this, the machine has as many plastic coils as there are bags in the battery (for normal home use there will be three, however it depends on the models).

A device of the machine automatically extracts the end of each coil and forms a bag by heat sealing the lower part of the same and disposing its upper part in the storage mechanism (5) for temporary openings and closures. This operation is performed as long as a packaging and ejection operation has occurred (6).

SUBSTITUTE SHEET (RULE 26)

Claims

1. Garbage processing device used to classify, compact and package solid waste, usable in the domestic sphere, in commerce, in the service sector or in the industry, characterized in that it is designed to:

a) Recognize the type of solid waste to be treated at the user's request and make prior admission.

b) Compact the waste admitted in the previous step. This waste may or may not have been previously crushed in the machine itself.

c) Extract from the compacted mass the liquids that may appear, expelling them out of the machine.

d) Classify the compacted mass through its accommodation in a suitable container for this purpose, such as a colored bag that indicates the type of solid waste.

e) Store the residue in the aforementioned container that will remain temporarily closed, until it is refilled with another compacted mass of the same type of solid waste.

f) Sealing and expulsion of the container containing solid waste when any of the following circumstances occur

• Having reached the capacity limit of the container.

• Having exceeded the maximum allowed storage time since the first compacted mass was introduced. • Decision of expulsion by the user.

SUBSTITUTE SHEET (RULE 26)

2. A garbage processing apparatus according to claim one characterized in that it can be prepared to treat one, two or more types of solid waste simultaneously.

3. A garbage processing apparatus according to claims 1 and 2, characterized by having a device for temporary opening and closing of compacted and classified solid waste containers.

4. A garbage processing apparatus according to claims 1, 2 and 3 characterized by having an automatic washing system for the interior parts that have been in contact with solid waste.

5. A machine according to claims 1, 2, 3 and 4 characterized in that it can have a sterilization system based on ultraviolet rays, by means of which it eliminates bacteria and other microorganisms that appear as a consequence of the treatment of solid waste.

A garbage processing apparatus according to claims 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 characterized in that it can have an automatic system for feeding containers for waste so that the ejected containers are automatically replaced.

SUBSTITUTE SHEET (RULE 26)