Virginia City Approves Asphalt Shingle Recycling Facility Tidewater Green Corp. will operate the facility in Chesapeake, Va.

BHS Announces Promotion

Oregon Rolls Out Free Electronic Recycling Program A total of 225 sites in the state will handle electronic scrap.

Connecticut DEP Joins the Northeast States Electronics Challenge

US Shredder Introduces New Shredder Air System

Tennessee City Named "Model City" for Recycling Program American Beverage Association, The Climate Group also unveil partnership arrangement to boost residential recycling.

Mascus Opens Office in Portugal Mascus, the Pan-European marketplace for used heavy equipment and machinery opens an office in Portugal.

US Shredder Delivers Downstream System to Kentucky Recycler

Laidlaw Completes Acquisition of N.H. Pulp Mill Site will become a biomass-to-energy project.

Rio Tinto Sells Chinese Aluminum Smelting Joint Venture Metals, mining firm taking steps to reduce debt.

US Shredder Introduces New Shredder Line

Oregon City Enhances C&D Recycling Program Portland enhances program that was developed two years ago.

China Agency Buys Large Block of Aluminum Move is being done to improve aluminum market.

Superior Industries Receives Second Patent on Conveyor Support Design Patented FB undercarriage gives conveyors stability at longer lengths.

Requests for Proposal (RFPs) for the Week The following are RFPs posted for the week ending Jan. 2, 2009.

MARCA Enters Shredding, Recycling Business Ohio-based non-profit seeks business opportunities.

Silver Recycling Sells Subsidiaries Company fails to meet vendor note conditions.

Indiana Suspends Funding for Recycling Programs State cites difficult economy as key reason for halting programs.

Nokia India Introduces Electronic Recycling Program in India

Florida County Expands Recycling Efforts Leon County enters C&D recycling contract with Tallahassee, Fla.-based Marpan Recycling.

Aluminum Top 30 Day Aluminum

THE SQUEEZE IS ON. Among the most desirable grades of scrap sought by some consumers are prompt grades produced during the extrusion process. Brown says that, fundamentally, "What everyone would like to have for remelt operations is clean process scrap from extrusion plants."

Brown says of such factory-generated grades of scrap: "They are nicely segregated by alloys, clean, easy to handle, and the logistics of collecting and processing them are fairly easy."

On the plus side, extrusion is a process that, relative to some other forms of metalworking, generates a lot of scrap. Brown estimates extruders generate anywhere from 18 percent to 28 percent scrap at their presses.

This generation occurs as heated billets are pushed through shaping dies and then as the extruded shapes are clamped to be stretched. The shape of the extrusion is ruined at the clamped ends, so these ends are trimmed and scrapped. "The nature of the operation is such that even our best operations probably only use 82 percent of the metal," notes Brown.

But even this steady production of extrusion scrap goes only a short way toward providing scrap needed as feedstock by remelt furnace operators. Brown says that if a remelt operator wants to produce new billets for one of ifs extrusion customers, that same customer's scrap produces only about one-third of the scrap material needed.

"If you want to produce a billet that is 75 percent scrap and 25 percent primary aluminum, but you only get one-quarter of the prior billet back, you have to fill that gap," says Brown.

PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED. The need for a large volume of scrap to feed a scrap-dependent production process is not unique to aluminum remelters. Steel mills using the electric arc furnace (EAF) method have long had to explore how to use a broad range of ferrous scrap grades in their processes.

The development of auto shredding plants and their downstream separating systems have gone a long way toward filling the ferrous scrap demand of EAF steelmakers by digging into the obsolete scrap stream.

Shredding plants produce grades of aluminum scrap as well, but most remelt operators are not able to use the mixed-alloy "twitch" grade produced through this process.

Several barriers restrict the grades remelt operators can use:

* Molten aluminum is much more volatile than molten steel, so some contaminants do more than spoil the chemistry. Some are categorized as "volatiles," meaning they can cause explosions at the remelt plant.

* Emissions at remelt shops are being closely monitored with the enactment of the maximum achievable control technology (MACT) requirements is sued and revised by the U.S. EPA earlier this decade. The presence of paint on scrap can be a particular dilemma from this respect.

* Even if volatiles can be avoided and emissions standards met, it is still important to meet narrow chemistry specifications to produce the precise alloy demanded by customers.

CAPITAL IDEAS. If remelt operators wish to broaden their scrap range, they are thus faced with several investment and spending scenarios.

They may well need to upgrade inspection procedures to scrutinize scrap shipments carefully for volatile substances. They will likely have to invest in emissions control systems that will allow them to melt painted scrap grades. And they will almost certainly have to broaden their scrap purchasing methods to reach new sources of scrap.