OPIC funds loan for Turkish aluminum recycling project

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) is providing a $30 million loan for the construction of an aluminum recycling plant in Turkey that will use environmentally-friendly United States technology to deliver up to 60,000 tons of recycled aluminum annually in liquid form, saving customers valuable processing time and expense.

OPIC is providing the loan for construction and operation of a 6,500 square meter aluminum recycling facility in Tekirdag, outside of Istanbul. The plant will receive both used beverage cans and clean industrial scrap for conversion into liquid aluminum, which will be sold to primary and secondary manufacturers in Turkey or on the local spot market. The plant, which will use natural gas as fuel, became fully operational in November.

The United States sponsor of the project is Chinook Sciences International, LLC, part of Chinook Sciences Group, a New Jersey-based scientific research engineering company and a leader in gasification technology.

The facility will employ state-of-the-art Rodecs® equipment, which is able to gasify all organic material from scrap metal, thereby transforming low quality contaminated metal scrap into clean, high-value metal in an environmentally-friendly process. The Rodecs gasifies, rather than burns, the materials so that the scrap metal is cleaned with minimal yield loss.

In so doing, it is able to rid the aluminum of oil, paint, plastic, polyethylene, paper and water. Since these waste materials are evaporated, harmful emissions are eliminated from the process. The Rodecs equipment can also process any kind of organic waste and produce energy in the form of electricity or biofuel with emission levels that are well within United States and European regulatory standards.