With landfill space at a premium and community opposition making it more difficult to expand existing sites, municipalities across the country are increasingly looking for solutions to maximize their landfill density through the use of equipment.

While compactors may help condense material after it has been tipped on-site, high-capacity shredders allow municipalities a more proactive solution for reducing waste volumes.

In April, Bill Raper, general manager of the Gresham, South Carolina-based Sandlands Landfill, and Mike Bessant, assistant executive director at South Carolina’s Horry County Solid Waste Authority, got to see one of these solutions in action for themselves as Lindner Recyclingtech demonstrated its Urraco 95 DK mobile twin-shaft shredder at the Sandlands Landfill.

Raper and Bessant, along with a contingent of other parties, were interested in seeing how the Urraco 95 DK could potentially help extend a landfill’s life by preshredding incoming mixed C&D material. With this in mind, Service and Test Lab Manager Jake Dennis pitted the Urraco 95 DK against both an 80- and 120-ton pile of wood waste, green waste and light C&D materials to see how it would fare in a real-world scenario—the goal being to shred the materials at a rate of 80-plus tons per hour.

Powered by its robust 770-horsepower engine, the Urraco 95 DK’s slow-speed twin-shaft cutting system featuring fully welded crushers, rippers and scrapers made short work of the on-site debris.

According to Dennis, the 80-ton pile was processed in less than an hour and the 120-ton pile was shredded in 90 minutes with a resulting throughput size at 90 percent of 8 to 12 inches.

“The Urraco is really well suited to C&D material,” Dennis says. “We ran the machine with our specially designed C&D shafts and it quickly processed all of the various material that was fed into it. During the run, the machine was only working at 40 to 60 percent power, which leads to good operating efficiency. The output size also exceeded expectations for the application we demonstrated. In all, it was quite a success.”

Following the demonstration, Raper and the operators at the Sandlands Landfill wanted to gauge for themselves how effective the Urraco was at condensing the materials within the landfill. After performing an independent airspace density test, Raper reported a 40-percent increase in density achieved in areas where the incoming material was preshredded by the Urraco versus the areas where only a landfill compactor was used to condense the material. Through data obtained by the airspace density test, Raper also found they could extend the useful life of its compactor with about 50 percent fewer passes when dealing with preshredded material from the Urraco.

“This test really proved the versatility and capability of our Urraco-series machines,” Rob Vogel, a Lindner Urraco representative, says. “Not only did it flawlessly perform the test, it also provided results that add tremendous value to the landfill. Obviously, the increase in density was the goal of the demonstration, but it also allows a landfill owner to consider investing in a smaller, less expensive compactor or even a track loader that costs less to operate per hour, which just adds to the value of the Urraco.”

To learn more about the Urraco 95 DK mobile twin-shaft shredder from Lindner Recyclingtech, call 1-800-235-1391 or visit https://www.lindner.com/