Glass recycling plant opens in Pennsylvania

After 21 months of effort by the Pennsylvania Recycling Markets Center (RMC), the RMC has coordinated the launch of a new recycled glass facility in Pennsylvania. At full production, this 6 million dollar project will create approximately 25 jobs while using 30,000 tons of recycled glass per year. Additionally, the advanced processing technology uses 75% less energy than conventional glass processing equipment.

LCL Industries, Inc., (LCL) located in Schuylkill County, will primarily use triple mix container glass, the color mixed fraction of clear, brown, and green glass that is a consequence of many recycling programs, to manufacture grit abrasives and potable water filtration media.

Critical to the project was financial support furnished by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Recycling Markets Infrastructure Development Grant, awarded in the amount of $500,000 to LCL Industries, Inc.

To produce the grit abrasives and water filtration media, LCL will utilize Krysteline’s glass processing implosion equipment. Krysteline, a European Company based in Wimborne Dorset, England, has patented a technology which implodes glass to size-reduce the material rather than traditional processes that pulverize, mill, or grind the glass.

This technology utilizes principles of implosion to shatter the glass. Typically, the resulting glass products are more geometrically uniform than recycled glass products produced from other traditional equipment.

LCL’s keystone product will be expendable blast abrasives. Although many benefits exist in using recycled, sharp-free glass as a blasting abrasive, the primary benefits include 25% - 30% reduction in pneumatic blasting pressure when applying the abrasive material, which significantly reduces energy consumption during use; recycled glass abrasive does not cause silicosis as a breathing hazard unlike natural sands; recycled glass abrasive does not typically contain heavy metals similar to many mineral slags which are used domestically as blast abrasives.