A sunshine state success story for St. Lucie: durability and engineering excellence let Lubo USA Equipment provide success to C&D recyclers of all types. Look inside for just one example of how Lubo's experienced engineering helped one recycler reach new heights in recycling

Construction & Demolition Recycling, May-June, 2005

St. Lucie Country Installation

St. Lucie County no longer has to reach for the sky to dispose of its C&D waste. Instead, Lubo USA LLC's CSD recycling equipment and quality European engineering expertise has helped the county reach new heights.

The situation at St. Lucie is that in Florida, especially on the east coast where the county is located, the water table is so close to the surface that a landfill's air space has a literal meaning-all the waste has to go aboveground. What St. Lucie needs to do at its landfill is tightly bale all the incoming waste, carefully stack it as tight as possible and cover it--making a mountain in the middle of flat Florida, and a motivation for recycling.

They wanted and needed the best equipment to do the most recycling as economically feasible as possible. Lubo was the only company with a turnkey system where all the components worked as they were supposed to.

Lubo relies on the finest European technology from the best C&D equipment manufacturer in Europe in order to provide solutions to challenges such as what the St. Lucie County facility faced.

But it takes more than machinery. It also takes engineering expertise, and this is something Lubo has from its European roots. C&D recycling on that continent has been going on longer and with more depth than in the U.S. market, which means Lubo's customers can rely on the company's experience in designing systems for whatever is in the waste stream. That is certainly something St. Lucie County did in designing its recycling system.

"The design and engineering of the Lubo system was for us a major selling point of this system," says Ron Roberts of St. Lucie County. "It's amazing how well it functions."

Especially compared to what the county was doing before the Lubo plant was installed in July 2004. "Before then we were pulling out a negligible amount of C&D, maybe a little metal and OCC," says Roberts. "All the wood and other material was going to the landfill. Now the wood waste, instead of being disposed, is being sold as a fuel. Not only does the operation get about $5.50 a ton for the wood, but the trucking is paid for by the buyer. That is quite a turnaround in revenue. It is a tremendous savings to recycle, especially when you amortize the cost of the equipment over 20 years."

It is a lot more than nothing that the Lubo USA plant is now recycling into revenue producing products. At start up Lubo guaranteed the plant to process 45 tons per hour of mixed C&D, and St. Lucie County was able to recycle 98% of that material. That 45 tons allowed the county to process all of its usual 300 tons per day stream. Then came the series of hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004. The Lubo C&D sorting system did its part in the clean up of those devastating natural disasters, as the waste stream picked up to 1400 tons per day. The Lubo system was able to increase its throughput by about 75%, to 78 tons per hour, while still maintaining that marvelous 98% recycling rate.

How does it do it? That's where the experienced engineering combines with the innovative equipment.

One of Lubo's techniques used in Florida is a vibrating feeder that is designed to take material set on it by the excavator with a grapple. The feeder then pulls it apart and spreads it evenly for the trip up the inclined belt to the first starscreen.

These starscreens are the heart of a Lubo USA sorting system because of their ability to sort materials. Developed more than 35 years ago, they have now become a fixture in many aspects of the recycling industry. The starscreen has a high production capacity and the units can be mounted in a series to allow different sized products to be produced simultaneously.

At St. Lucie County, after the vibrating feeder, the material to be processed travels up a 55-inch-wide inclined conveyor to a Lubo presorting platform. At this platform are four picking stations where employees are looking for oversized materials such as textiles and long stringy materials before the first starscreen.

The starscreen is a Model 660 with a length of nearly 20 feet and width of 57 inches. This largest model in the Lubo USA line has 26-inch diameter stars placed in a solid frame and inside an enclosed plate steel box. While saying the system's uptime has been fantastic, Roberts is enthused about the star's ease of maintenance.

Materials larger than 12 inches pass through the Lubo Model 660 starscreen to an 82-foot-long, 55inch-wide sorting belt with 4 picking stations. At these stations, workers are recovering metals, 0CC, aggregate, and wood

Below that first starscreen catching the 12-inch minus is an unders conveyor with a long material separator at the end. This important component, a Lubo specialty, removes the long fractions that pass through the first screen. The separator has a material aligning tool on the conveyor and the pulling roller, which dumps the material through a chute in a bunker.

After the separator is the second Lubo starscreen, a Model 165 that is 49 inches wide and 16 ft 5 inches long. The screen deck is equipped with 6inch stars and minus 1/2 inch material passes through it. Another long sorting conveyor is after the screen, where two pickers are sorting for aggregate, metals and other products. The starscreen is another moneymaker for St. Lucie County. The 3/8 inch minus that falls through this screen is used as a dirt cover material at the landfill.