In September 2020, the’Garbage Mountain’ site in Hanam-myeon, Uiseong-gun, Gyeongbuk. Provided by Uiseong-gun
In a village in Uiseong-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, a football stadium (7500m2) double the area and a three-story building (15m), which had been piled up to a height of 15m, completely disappeared last month, five years after the occurrence. Although it was a large-scale (208,000 tons) waste that was reported in foreign media, it is evaluated that it was the first case of illegal waste treatment in Korea that it succeeded in recycling and set a’milestone’. This is because 57% of the total was recycled as cement auxiliary fuel and recycled soil. In addition, the waste treatment period has been significantly shortened to 1 year and 6 months compared to the previous method (7 years), and the cost has also been reduced to half (22.8 billion won) compared to the previous 52 billion won. It is analyzed that this was possible because there was CI Ecotech, a recycling sorting and processing company that performed solely the waste acid treatment service in Uiseong-gun.
Il-ho Cho, CEO of CI Ecotech, explains the world’s first continuous hitting type sorting machine developed at the Yeouido office. / Reporter Ahn Dae-gyu
In 2019, the Ministry of Environment and Uiseong-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, convened 13 incinerators nationwide to solve the’garbage acid’ created by a waste recycling company that was left without permission from 2016. However, each of them expressed their discomfort due to the limit of the amount of treatment, and when the nearby public landfill reached saturation, they struck SOS to CI Ecotech, which possesses recycling sorting technology. In May of that year, CI Ecotech was selected as an independent waste sorting and disposal company, and installed a temporary plant right next to the garbage mountain to select renewable waste vinyl and send it to the cement sand, and the soil (waste sand) was cleanly recycled. Waste vinyl was used as an auxiliary fuel to replace bituminous coal in cement manufacturing by Ssangyong Cement and others because of its high calorific value. The waste soil was recycled with only fine soil from which scrap metal and foreign substances were removed through the complex separator of CI Ecotech. Of the total 208,000 tons of waste, 95,000 tons of cement auxiliary fuel and 52,000 tons of recycled soil are each recycled. The overall recycling rate reached 57%. Il-ho Cho, CEO of CI Ecotech, said, “There has been no case of illegal waste that has been mostly incinerated and landfilled so far.”
The core technology that this company showed in the process of treating’garbage acid’ was in the’continuous blow type sorting machine’, which was developed for the first time in the world to remove foreign substances from waste vinyl. President Il-ho Cho developed this device with inspiration from a threshing machine that removes grain from ears such as rice and barley. Usually, waste is recycled or incinerated or landfilled through steps such as collection, transport, crushing, and sorting. About 40% of the onomatopoeic waste is waste vinyl, and most of the waste vinyl was in a state that could not be recycled due to various foreign substances. In the case of Uiseong waste, before incineration and landfilling of waste vinyl fragments that have gone through the shredding step, it goes through an additional step of passing through four roller devices (continuous hitting type sorting machine) installed with 130 hitting blades rotating at high speed. The waste vinyl, which received a strong impact of 800 times per minute in the continuous blow sorter, all of the foreign substances such as moisture, glass and metal on the surface fell down, and all of it was recycled as a cement auxiliary fuel. CI Ecotech has eight domestic and foreign patented technologies related to this facility. President Cho Il-ho explained, “In Korea, most recycling sorting machines have been imported from Germany, but the imported products were designed to be poorly suited to the circumstances of Korea’s garbage, which contains a lot of foreign substances such as broths in vinyl, so the recycling rate was inevitably low.”
It is analyzed that CI Ecotech’s patented technology has made a way to recycle household waste contained in volume-based bags that have been landfilled and incinerated since it was impossible to recycle. In the meantime, the entire volume of waste in the volume-based bag has been incinerated and landfilled, but using this technology, it is possible to recycle up to 50%. The company and some local governments in the metropolitan area have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) and are planning to conduct a pilot project in the near future.
Internal model diagram of continuous hitting type sorting machine for recycling waste vinyl
President Il-ho Cho is a national judo player who won a silver medal in the Asian Championship and has a unique experience. He joined Ssangyong Cement Judo Team and worked for 23 years, learning the technology of recycling waste used as fuel for cement. With the establishment of CI Ecotech in 2014, it established a factory in Pocheon, taking the lead in sorting and treating waste in the metropolitan area and developing Korean-style recycling facilities. Despite the corona crisis, last year’s sales recorded 20 billion won, a 2.5-fold increase from the previous year (8 billion won). President Il-ho Cho said, “The metropolitan landfill site is about to end in 2025, and the construction of new incineration and landfill sites that require social conflicts and high costs is not the only fundamental solution to waste disposal.” And will contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.”
Reporter Ahn Dae-gyu [email protected]
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