SHREDDING

Chapter 5
Processing of Municipal Solid Waste

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 What is Shredding?
Strictly speaking, shredding is one form of size
reduction - others being such processes as cutting,
shearing, grinding, crushing, and other imaginative terms,
many of which originated in mining engineering.

In solid waste work, however, shredding is the generic

term for size reduction even though, strictly speaking, shred-
ding is only one method of size reduction. In this text, as in solid
waste literature, shredding encompasses all of the processes
used for making little particles out of big particles.
Use of Shredders in Solid Waste Processing
01 To facilitate disposal with little consideration for materials recovery.

Earth cover in a shredded refuse landfill is considered unnecessary because of the following reasons:
• Odor. The shredded refuse is well mixed and retains its aerobic character when spread in
reasonably thin layers, so odor is not a problem.
• Rats. There are no large food particles in shredded refuse that could support a rat population.
• Insects. The drier refuse, regularly covered with new layers, suppresses insect breeding,
and all of the maggots are killed during shredding.
• Blowing Paper. Small pieces are not caught by the wind and do not blow away, while large pieces
of paper and plastics found in a conventional landfill would be readily transported by wind.

02 The production of refuse-derived fuel (RDF).

The processing of yard waste as well as demolition debris, branches, and other organic material to
03 produce a mulch that then can be composted or used as a ground cover.

• Shredders used for this purpose are grinders, consisting of a tub in which grinding gears rub the
feed particles against the inside wall and break them up into smaller pieces.

Perhaps the most important use of shredders is in materials recovery. Mixed municipal solid waste is
composed mostly of materials that are physically attached, and it is not easy or simple to separate them.
 Types of Shredders Used for Solid Waste
Hammermill
Processing
consisting of a central rotor
on which are pinned radial
hammers that are free to
swing on the pins..

Vertical Shear Shredders

Hammermill Slow-speed shear
has a vertical shaft, and shredders were originally
the material moves by used to slice whole tires
gravity down the sides Hog prior to disposal.
Horizontal Hammermill Flail Mill
of the housing. originally used in pulp
the rotor is sup- ported by consists of arms with elbows
bearings on either end, and and paper manufacturing that beat at the plastic bags to
the feed is by gravity or from wood chips. The open them so that the contents
conveyor. . hog is used to shred can be processed further.
green waste.
 - One of the most important design and operational parameters to
be considered in size reduction is the change in particle-size
distribution of the feed and the final product.
- The effect from shredding can differ for various material
components in solid waste. Figure 5-12 shows the size distribution
after shredding in a hammer mill.
- Laboratory measurement of particle size is in itself difficult, since
the material is in odd shapes.
- The method of measuring particle size can also influence the
results of any given study. The common procedure for measuring
particle-size distribution is by sieving.

The size distribution of

Describing particles generally cannot be
expressed by any single-

Shredder valued function and is instead

expressed by an equation
describing the distribution of
Performance various size fractions. The
general nomenclature17 used
for these equations is defined
by Changes in Figure 5-13, showing a plot
of the cumulative weight Y less
in Particle-Size than size x, which is plotted
versus the particle size x. .
Distribution
 Power Requirements of Shredders
 Only limited information is available about the power requirements of shredders.

 Various estimates indicate that the hammer mill is grossly inefficient, with only about 0.1% to
2.0% of the energy supplied to the machine appearing as increased surface energy of the
product solids.

 Part of the explanation for such low efficiencies lies in the plastic deformation and viscoelastic
flow that accompanies shredding.

 The efficiency of a shredding operation depends on how the energy is applied and on how the
material reacts to it. A machine that applies load rapidly is inherently inefficient, since more
energy is required than if the force could be applied more slowly.

 Higher speeds, nevertheless, produce the finest product particle size, but this requires more
energy.
 Health and Safety
One need only reflect on the types of materials people thoughtlessly throw
away into refuse cans to realize the serious health and safety aspects of shredding MSW.
Specifically, shredders can be hazardous because of noise, dust, and explosions.

 The noise levels around a 3-ton/h hammermill range from 95 to 100 dBA with much of the noise produced
being a low-frequency rumble. Materials recovery facilities processing MSW produce considerable impact
noise. It seems likely that shredder operators will need to wear ear protection, and noise reduction should
be considered in the design of future resource recovery facilities.

 Dust can cause several problems: It can be a vector for the transmission of pathogenic microorganisms, it
can itself have a detrimental effect on health by affecting the respiratory system, and it can explode. Plate
counts at shredding operations have indicated that the total bacterial counts during the shredder operation
are as muchYour Text
as 20 timesHere
greater than the ambient, which contains about 880 organisms/cu.m of air. There
is a potential danger of disease transmission by the air route during shredding of MSW.

 The high temperature and metal-to-metal contact in shredders has caused numerous explosions at
existing shredder installations. Two types of explosions are generally recognized: dust explosions and
those caused by explosive materials (such as gunpowder and partially filled gasoline cans). The only
realistic means of preventing explosions is to maintain a high level of surveillance on what is being fed to
the shredder. Two methods presently used to reduce the damage when explosions occur in refuse
shredders are venting and flame suppression.
 Hammer Wear
and Maintenance
 Because of the relatively unsophisticated and brute-force
nature of the shredding process, the wear and tear on
shredders can be substantial.
 One of the major maintenance headaches (and expenses)
at shredding facilities is the wear of the hammers.
 The pattern of wear on hammers is illustrated in Figure 5-
17. The wear is almost exclusively on the bottom edge of
the hammer’s crushing face, since this is the area of
impact when the material is crushed against the grate.

As the hammers wear down, the shredding performance decays. The percent of
materials passing the sieve (Y ) can be related to the tons of refuse processed (T ) by the equation
Y = b0 + b1 exp1 -b2T2, where b0, b1, and b2 are all constants.

Hammer wear for horizontal hammermills can be expected to be in the range

0.05 to 0.10 lb/ton when shredding MSW. Experience has shown, however, that much higher rates
of hammer wear are also possible. Figure 5-18 shows hammer wear distribution for a vertical
shredder used for raw refuse.
 Shredder Design
Shredders are not, in the strict sense, designed by a consulting engineer or the purchaser. They are
actually selected much as water pumps are selected for a specific application. Such specifications as
the speed, motor horsepower requirements, and the rotor inertia must be specified.
The rotor inertia is usually expressed as WR2, where W is the mass of the rotor assembly and R is the radius to the
hammermill tips. A wide range of WR2 is offered by manufacturers, from about 50,000 to 150,000 lb-ft2 (2000 to
6000 kg-m2).15
The motor horsepower is designed on the basis of starting horsepower. If the motor inertia WR2 is expressed as lb-ft2,
the rotor speed N in rpm, and starting time t in seconds, then the torque T is
WR2N
T= 9.6gt ; where g is the gravitational constant at 32.2 ft/sec2. The horsepower is then
calculated as,
2pTN
horsepower = 33,000 ; where T is torque in ft-lb.

Typically, a shredder used for MSW has four rows of hammers with a width/diameter ratio greater than 1.0, a hammer
weight of 150 lb (70 kg), a rotor inertia of 35,000 lb-ft2 (1500 kg-m2), a hammer tip speed of 14,000 ft/min (4260
m/min), and a starting time of 30 s. As a rule of thumb, an MSW shredder must be designed for at least 15 kWh/ton. For
horizontal hammermills, the grate openings can be changed to achieve different particle-size distribution of the product.
Similarly, final clearance in vertical mills can be changed to produce various-sized products.
THE END
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