Athens Services shares how its MRF in Sun Valley, California, applies data from various tools to improve uptime, throughput and maintenance.

As older material recovery facilities (MRFs) are upgraded and new MRFs built, they are incorporating tools that enable operators to capture data in real-time that can help operators improve uptime and throughput.

About six years ago, Athens Services built and opened a mixed-waste MRF in Sun Valley, California. The MRF features a system from Bulk Handling Systems (BHS), Eugene, Oregon, that includes a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that is designed to enable MRFs to improve efficiencies by tracking data. Today, the 80,000-square-foot MRF has about 150 employees and processes about 15,000 tons of commercial and residential single-stream mixed waste per month. The MRF is permitted to receive 1,500 tons of waste per day.

Athens Services, headquartered in City of Industry, California, operates a total of three MRFs: a 25-year-old MRF in City of Industry; a MRF it acquired from Crown Recycling near Sun Valley that processes municipal solid waste (MSW) and construction and demolition (C&D) debris; and the Sun Valley MRF that it built six years ago.

Riel Johnson, director of resource recovery at Athens Services, says his team was very excited in 2014 that the BHS system featured SCADA, a system of software and hardware that would provide the MRF with data to optimize operations.

“It took us some time to get a handle on what SCADA meant and what it provided, but as we learned about it, we started asking for more information,” he says.

SCADA is a feature many systems integrators offer. The SCADA system from BHS provides a customized supervisor dashboard, production reports, downtime tracking and cause analysis, staffing charts and integrated data collection.

Prior to installing the system, Johnson says Athens Services relied on manual reports at its MRFs to analyze operations. A foreman would manually report how long a line or screen was down, for example. However, that method wasn’t always reliable—sometimes foremen would forget to write certain things down. But with SCADA and automated systems, human error is less of an issue.

“With a fully automated SCADA system, the data is in real-time,” he says. “You can’t manipulate it. It’s created a non- biased report for us, which in general has made us a much better operator.”

In the last six years since adding the SCADA technology at the Sun Valley MRF, Athens Services has collected and analyzed data from that system as well as from several in-house apps the company has developed.

Brian Hunter, operations manager at Athens Services’ Sun Valley MRF, says the SCADA system consistently gathers data throughout the day.

“At any moment, we can go [into the system] if we want to know what’s going on,” he says.

Johnson adds that SCADA will send a report at the end of the day that highlights different data points that summarize operations at the MRF. Then, on a weekly basis, team members sit down to discuss the findings in those reports.

Hunter says the program provides a variety of important data points, including the system’s speed, material types sorted, capture rates, average hertz rate and screen angles. The company can use the data to make adjustments to screen angles and system speed in real-time based on material observations.

“We’re able to extract that data to know what we can do differently the next day,” Hunter says.

Some data SCADA provides help with productivity, such as determining how presorting affects downstream operations. “As presort folks wrestle through the material, it can slow the waste stream down,” Johnson says. “The significance of that is maybe we’re loading the system too high, or maybe there are some other things that are happening up front.”

The program also provides a good indication on how much uptime or downtime the MRF is experiencing.

“[I]t allows us to know how much we were up, whether we were up 95 percent of the time, 80 percent of the time, 100 percent of the time,” Hunter says. “Then it also tells us downtime. It also tells us in minutes and shows us exactly when it happened so we can figure out what caused the downtime.”

For instance, a report might say the MRF achieved a production time of four hours and 37 minutes out of a possible four hour and 45 minute shift, highlighting the few minutes of downtime. SCADA reports will identify how much downtime was because of operational issues and how much downtime was because of process issues.

By tracking downtime this way, Athens Services determined it would be more efficient to feed the system with a material handler than with a loader.

“A material handler increases our uptime,” Johnson says. “By tracking this uptime and downtime, and then doing some root-cause analysis, we’ve been able to make improvements all the way to the tipping floor and how we feed the system.”

Hunter and Johnson add that data from SCADA enable the MRF to be proactive when it comes to preventive maintenance. For example, SCADA monitors the amperage of the equipment’s motors. Johnson says if SCADA alerts him that amperage is too high on a motor, it could indicate that something is wrapped around a shaft.

“We look at that as a precursor or warning that a part may need to be rebuilt or replaced, or there’s something going on in the bearing,” Johnson continues. “So, data is also helping us do maintenance and improve uptime in general.”

Waste characterization studies provide good data on the material stream at a MRF. For a while, Athens Services did these studies by hand. But two years ago, Hunter says the company decided to develop a waste characterization app that could help improve accuracy in those studies.

“Our IT team, myself and a few others spent some time, combined what was happening via hand and tweaked it to be able to use it on an app,” Hunter says.

The MRF’s waste characterization app allows employees to input waste characterization data on tablets and smartphones. That information goes to a shared file using the company’s intranet. Hunter says information tracked on the app includes location of material collection, material type processed (such as recyclables, MSW, C&D and food waste), routing information, weights and photos. He adds that Athens Services has some employees on waste characterization teams that will input this information throughout the day. He says the app also allows employees to enter information about things like recovery goals and recovery rates.

An employee might enter bin weight, and the app tracks average weight for the bin over time. Or, an employee can enter information about residue to indicate what material is being missed in the sorting process, Hunter says.

“With the waste characterization app, whether it’s looking at one piece of data or data over a period of time, it just allows us to be able to find areas of improvement based on what we’re receiving,” he says. “It’s getting a representative sample from the residue, the process pile, whatever it might be. That representative sample is what we actually will characterize.”

Athens Services also developed a load-check app in 2019 to assess loads as they come to the MRF’s tipping floor. Hunter says before developing the app, MRF employees checked incoming loads by hand.

With the app, the MRF’s employees can assess loads for recyclability as they come in and feed information into the app. The data are then shared with the haulers who brought in the material.

Johnson says he hopes that sharing data with haulers will help them to clean up their routes and provide better education to customers if loads are consistently poor quality.

He adds that bale counts are another important data point. “This helps us with commodity sales and inventory,” Johnson says. “That’s data we gather at the end of the day from the baler operator and guys loading the containers that we utilize.”

Hunter says the SCADA system and the apps provide Athens Services with a great deal of information, which can be overwhelming to analyze. However, he says, focusing on data points that affect throughput, recovery and uptime are typically most important. The Athens Services team has learned what data to analyze most through trial and error.

“You can’t be afraid of the data but, at the same time, you can’t be afraid to make a mistake,” Hunter says. “One thing I’ve learned working with Riel and the team is that the data maybe didn’t look good this week, but that doesn’t mean you ignore it. Let’s look at the data a different way and figure out how we can get better next week.” 

Johnson offers that applying data at the MRF is like an art and a science.

“It’s nice to use data as an adjustment to the way you operate. But I don’t think an operator should ever rely strictly on data, nor do I think an operator should rely strictly on their gut,” he explains. “I think it’s a hybrid. You need to be able to rely on both.

“A lot of operators might be intimidated by data,” Johnson continues. “That’s absolutely acceptable and expected, but maybe just ease your way into it. Maybe pick a couple of data points or parameters that you want to analyze and just focus on those two. Then slowly broaden your scope. You just kind of develop a comfort. And then, it kind of almost becomes fun mining the data.”

Athens Services is a recycling and waste diversion company based in Southern California. Family-owned and operated since 1957, Athens was founded on the principle of providing exceptional service by hiring and developing great people while fostering a safe, healthy and sustainable environment. Today, the company teams with local communities, as well as private institutions and government agencies as a zero waste partner.

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at msmalley@gie.net.

Several companies are planning to deploy lithium-ion battery recycling technologies.

A number of companies have announced their intentions to recycle lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in the United States. Many of these technologies involve hydrometallurgical processes that are in different phases of development, and their output could play a critical role in developing domestic supply chains to support North American battery manufacturing.

The U.S. has a LIB production problem. Despite the goals of President Biden’s administration to replace the federal government’s vehicle fleet with American-made electric vehicles (EVs) that use a minimum of 50 percent domestically produced components, China accounts for nearly 75 percent of global LIB manufacturing capacity, writes Gavin Thompson, Asia Pacific vice chair at U.K.-based Wood Mackenzie, in a report released Feb. 10. China’s share of the global LIB market also is set to increase in the short term as it builds out additional manufacturing capacity.

However, recent announcements by Ultium Cells LLC, a joint venture between Seoul-based LG Energy Solution and Detroit-based General Motors, will help to increase U.S. production of LIBs. Ultium has announced that it will build two LIB cell manufacturing plants in the United States: The first is under construction in Lordstown, Ohio, near a former GM assembly plant that is now home to electric fleet truck manufacturer Lordstown Motors Corp., and the second will be built in Spring Hill, Tennessee. These plants will manufacture LIBs for use in vehicles produced by GM, which announced earlier this year that it plans to offer 30 all-electric models globally by mid-decade, while 40 percent of its U.S. models will be battery electric by the end of 2025.

However, manufacturing investments such as these don’t address another problem associated with LIB production: The raw materials used in LIBs—lithium, nickel and cobalt—are produced largely outside of the U.S.

According to Wood Mackenzie’s base case scenario for mobility electrification, nickel production would need to increase by almost 70 percent by 2040, while cobalt and lithium production would need to grow by 200 percent and by 600 percent, respectively. China is better positioned than the U.S. when it comes to these natural resources, having increased its ownership of cobalt resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and lithium reserves in Chile and Indonesian nickel mines, Thompson writes, adding that China also has most of the global refining capacity for these metals.

With this in mind, battery manufacturers are investing to reduce the proportion of cobalt in batteries, he says, citing the work GM and LG are doing through Ultium to reduce use of the metal by 70 percent by increasing the amount of aluminum used. Panasonic and Tesla also are working to develop a cobalt-free battery, Thompson writes.

Additionally, Ultium has announced a partnership with Li-Cycle, a recycling company, that will help Ultium recover raw materials from its manufacturing scrap and that could unlock additional recycled material supply.

Aqua Metals is in the process of applying its AquaRefining technology to lithium-ion batteries and licensing its process to lead-acid battery recyclers. Read more at www.RecyclingToday.com/article/aqua-metals-new-business-model.

Through Li-Cycle, Ultium Cells will be able to recycle scrap battery materials generated in the manufacturing process, including cobalt, nickel, lithium, graphite, copper, manganese and aluminum. Ninety-five percent of these materials can be used in the production of new batteries or in adjacent industries, according to a news release issued by GM in early May.

“Our combined efforts with Ultium Cells will be instrumental in redirecting battery manufacturing scrap from landfills and returning a substantial amount of valuable battery-grade materials back into the battery supply chain,” Ajay Kochhar, Li-Cycle president, CEO and co-founder, says in the news release. “This partnership is a critical step forward in advancing our proven lithium-ion resource recovery technology as a more sustainable alternative to mining.”

Kochhar tells Recycling Today the amount of scrap generated in LIB manufacturing can range from 5 percent to 10 percent. Ultium says its two sites each will have more than 30 gigawatt hours of annual capacity, with room to expand.

Mississauga, Ontario-based Li-Cycle was established in 2016 and is taking a hub-and-spoke approach to LIB recycling, with existing commercial spokes in Rochester, New York, and Kingston, Ontario. The company is developing its first commercial hub in Rochester, where it will use a hydrometallurgical process to recycle the black mass produced at its spokes.

Li-Cycle plans to construct 20 spoke facilities globally over the next five years and four hubs, Kochhar says, and the company recently announced the construction of its third spoke in Gilbert, Arizona, within the Phoenix Metro area. Once the Gilbert spoke is online, Li-Cycle will be able to process up to 10,000 metric tons of end-of-life batteries and battery manufacturing scrap annually at the site, bringing its total recycling capacity to 20,000 metric tons per year, the company says.

“We noticed that we need to be as nimble as we can to adapt to customers,” he says. “We have to be nimble and thoughtful about the buildout.”

Kochhar, who has a background in chemical engineering and formerly worked for Canada-based Hatch helping to develop lithium conversion projects, says Li-Cycle’s hub-and-spoke model solves the logistics problem associated with LIBs by decentralizing the mechanical processing of the batteries near generators, namely battery manufacturers and areas with high concentrations of EV use. The company also is working with aggregators of end-of-life electronics, he says. Its spokes produce black mass—a mixture of lithium, manganese, cobalt and nickel—as well as a mixed aluminum and copper product and plastics.

Under Li-Cycle’s business model, every hub would be fed by 12 spokes, Kochhar says. The spokes are “very deployable and easily permittable,” he adds. These sites shred the batteries using a process that involves “aqueous immersion,” according to one of the company’s patents, which helps to mitigate the thermal risk posed by the batteries.

Li-Cycle’s demonstration plant in Kingston processes the black mass using a “wet chemistry” process, Kochhar says, that enables the company to recover lithium carbonate, cobalt sulphate, nickel sulphate and manganese carbonate that can be used to manufacture new batteries or in other applications.

When selecting the locations for Li-Cycle’s hubs, he says access to a good labor pool with a knowledge of chemical processing and the ability to plug into existing infrastructure are key considerations. The company plans to break ground on its Rochester hub, which will be in the Eastman Business Park (also home to its Rochester spoke), in late 2021, with operations starting at the end of 2022 or in early 2023. When fully operational, the site will employ 120 people, Kochhar says.

As LIB production in North America increases, he says, Li-Cycle has the opportunity to work with these manufacturers on truly closed-loop recycling solutions, where a unit of lithium goes back to the same supply chain.

Boston-based Nth Cycle is exploring toll processing arrangements with mine operators and recyclers in North America using its electro-extraction technology to recover critical metals from end-of-life batteries and electronics, low-grade ore and mine tailings. The company recently secured $3.2 million in funding from investors led by Clean Energy Ventures, also based in Boston.

The company’s process uses electricity rather than hydro-metallurgy or pyrometallurgy to extract battery materials from black mass, Nth Cycle’s founder and CEO Megan O’Connor says.

The system “is based on an electrochemically modified filter press, combining both filtration and electrowinning into one unit,” Nth Cycle’s website states. “This allows for operation at low voltages and high current efficiencies, significantly reducing energy costs and footprint. In addition, the in situ base production alleviates the need for highly caustic chemicals while reducing waste, potential hazards and greenhouse gas emissions.”

Nth Cycle’s technology was developed in 2017 by doctorate students at Harvard and Yale universities. O’Connor says she was a scribe during the Green Electronics Summit at Yale, which included presentations from companies such as Apple and Dell. “Recycling kept coming up over and over again,” she says. O’Connor says she changed her doctoral project to help address the issue and has been working to commercialize the technology.

The company will use the funding it has received to deploy several pilot projects with recyclers and mine operators early next year. Nth Cycle says battery recyclers, operators of existing and proposed mines, automotive original equipment manufacturers, micromobility companies and battery manufacturers are interested in the technology to reduce their reliance on imported critical metals or environmentally unfriendly recovery technologies.

O’Connor says that if the Biden administration can realize its goals for vehicle electrification and green energy, alternative sources of critical metals will be needed because of global supply chain issues. Her company’s technology can recover these metals from end-of-life products as well as help North American mines, which yield lower grades of some of these critical metals, to upgrade material in a cost-competitive way, “enabling a new supply chain,” she says.

Nth Cycle’s technology is modular with a minimal footprint, O’Connor says, though it can accommodate high volumes of feedstock. A typical unit requires 300 square feet and can process 500 tons annually.

She says Nth Cycle’s technology produces minimal waste. “All byproducts can be sold as secondary products. Our mission was to create technology that didn’t create more waste.”

Nth Cycle says its technology “can be tuned to capture a wide variety of transition, rare earth and precious metals.” Its metal hydroxides can be sold to hydrometallurgical refineries for reuse in lithium-ion cathode manufacturing, saving time, cost and resources in the production of battery-grade precursors.

O’Connor says Li-Cycle and Redwood Materials, the company co-founded by former Tesla executive JB Straubel, “are very focused on the logistics play,” capturing batteries from generators to produce black mass that they then refine.

Nth Cycle’s business model, however, is focused on on-site toll processing arrangements with companies that are producing black mass or mines. She views this approach as “more economical and sustainable,” eliminating the need for transportation. “Transportation is expensive and hazardous,” O’Connor says. “We can go where the batteries are.”

Dan Goldman, a co-founder and managing director of Clean Energy Ventures, says the company invested in Nth Cycle because its process is “so much more efficient than any battery recycling technology on the market” and “elegant in its simplicity.” He adds that Nth Cycle’s process is easily scalable with the ability to process everything from black mass to mining ores and tailings.

Also “particularly compelling” about Nth Cycle, Goldman says, is the company’s ability to reduce vulnerability around global supply chains. “We have to have production in this country. It creates jobs and economic opportunity and solidifies the supply chain so we can make things here and are not dependent on China and other parts of the world,” he says. Goldman adds that manufacturers such as GM, Ford and Apple also have a bias toward avoiding sourcing from unstable countries that also might use child labor.

Aqua Metals, a McCarran, Nevada-based company that has developed technology to recycle lead-acid batteries, says it has invested $2 million, paid in Aqua Metals stock shares, for a 10 percent ownership stake in LiNiCo Corp., a Nevada-based company focused on closed-loop LIB recycling.

LiNiCo has the U.S. exclusive license to use technology from Green Li-ion Pte Ltd., based in Singapore. LiNiCo also has a 20 percent ownership stake in Green Li-ion, with representation on its board.

Green Li-ion says its technology can “recycle a myriad of LIB types at once using one machine alone, the GLMC-1.”

The GLMC-1 technology is based on a co-precipitation sequence that allows the recovery of cathode metal salts, without separation of the metal elements, “speeding up the recycling process by two to three times,” according to Green Li-ion. These metal salts are the precursor for synthesis of new cathode material that can form the basis for new LIBs.

The technology can be used to enhance existing LIB recycling processes or can be used as a stand-alone system for recycling and cathode manufacturing, according to the company.

LiNiCo says it plans to increase its ownership stake in Green Li-ion and further develop its own sustainable clean technologies. It plans to produce 10,000 metric tons of pure cathode in the next three years.

Aqua Metals says its investment in LiNiCo is part of its strategy to grow by potentially applying its AquaRefining process to LIB recycling.

LiNiCo is leasing, with additional purchase deposits to buy, part of Aqua Metals’ 136,000-square-foot facility in McCarran. “This noncore asset disposition was driven by the company’s accelerated focus on its equipment supply and licensing strategy,” Aqua Metals says of the lease agreement.

Steve Cotton, CEO of Aqua Metals, says Green Li-ion’s hydrometallurgical technology is “complementary” to Aqua Metals’ technology. Additionally, Aqua Metals filed a provisional patent for recovering high-value metals from recycled LIBs using AquaRefining, saying early- phase testing shows its methodology that originally was developed to plate lead from lead-acid batteries can be used to plate the high-value metals found in LIBs, such as cobalt, nickel and manganese.

Cotton says LIBs present a challenge “that no one company can solve alone,” which is why it has formed an “eco network” with LiNiCo, Green Li-ion and Comstock Mining.

Michael Vogel, president, CEO and founder of LiNiCo, agrees. “It’s important that we form these coalitions because they are stronger than being a one-man band.”

He says Green Li-ion’s technology “produces a higher grade product that skips the steps involved in the extraction of individual battery metals, such as pure lithium, nickel and cobalt, to produce pure cathode,” which takes steps out of the battery manufacturing process. Using its own process, LiNiCo also can recover the individual battery metal salts, giving the company five possible revenue streams.

LiNiCo’s process involves four other stages before the material enters the Green Li-ion system, Vogel says. They include shredding the LIBs; drying and gas cleaning; a separation process that removes secondary materials, such as copper, aluminum, steel and plastics, to isolate the black mass, which then goes through additional processing and purification before being fed to the Green Li-ion system.

He says the company’s goal is to produce 2 tons per day of 99 percent pure cathode per machine, with 20 machines on order. Within three years, LiNiCo plans to produce 10,000 tons annually. “Every 1,000 tons of batteries will produce approximately half a ton of cathode material,” Vogel says. “We are going to need 20,000 tons of batteries to produce 10,000 tons of cathode in a single year.”

LiNiCo intends to expand its facilities in the U.S., Vogel says, and potentially could license additional technologies, such as AquaRefining.

Comstock Mining Inc., based in Virginia City, Nevada, has a 45 percent ownership stake in LiNiCo presently, he says.

Corrado DeGasperis, who is Comstock’s chairman of the board, director and chief executive officer, says the company’s stake in LiNiCo is part of its “transformational green shift,” which also includes its global mercury remediation and other renewable natural resource projects.

While Comstock says it has historically focused on the extraction of precious and strategic metals, it now believes “the global clean energy transition, escalating population growth and accelerating natural resource scarcity is converging into a ‘perfect storm’ of global demand for a broader array of strategic materials.” Therefore, Comstock’s strategic focus is expanding to include “the extraction and valorization of a portfolio of critical and inevitably scarce materials, with an initial preference for high cash throughput generators that complement our existing competencies and operations.”

Regarding the eco network Comstock has formed with LiNiCo, Aqua Metals and Green Li-ion, DeGasperis says, “It feels like we are one company with a common goal. It feels like we have something more cohesive, more competent. It feels better to have all of these resources together.”

While he says Aqua Metals and LiNiCo are “well ahead in the race” to commercialize LIBs recycling, DeGasperis adds, “I’m not sure there are going to be winners and losers in the LIB space” because of the volume of material that will be available. “I hope everyone is successful—I hope LiNiCo is the most successful.”

The author is editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at dtoto@gie.net.

The headquarters of LG Energy Solution initially were misidentified as being in Taiwan.

Building and maintaining close industry relationships has helped keep George Chen and G&T Trading going for 24 years.

George Chen began his career in the scrap recycling industry as a fiber procurement manager for Cheng Loong Corp., a corrugated linerboard manufacturer in Taiwan. He initially worked in Taiwan, but the company sent him to the United States in 1982 to try to find new U.S.-based suppliers of recovered paper. He says he and his wife, Tammy, eventually settled permanently in New Jersey in 1986.

“I still remember how nervous I was during my first two years in America. My wife and I came together, and we did not know English very well. We learned together,” Chen says. “Luckily, my Taiwan paper company’s boss was very nice and decided to let me stay in the U.S. permanently so that I could concentrate on finding the source of suppliers from the East Coast and West Coast.”

Chen retired from Cheng Loong in 1997, but his retirement didn’t last long. That same year, he decided to take a risk and started G&T Trading International Corp., a paper scrap brokerage business, in Clifton, New Jersey. “When I made up my mind to retire, I planned on opening G&T Trading immediately,” he says. “I love international trade businesses, and with my 18 years of experience, I had made a lot of friends in the recycling industry who really supported me. I thought, I can build my own company [and] take a risk and chance.”

The recovered paper market was not strong in 1997, but Chen says he felt confident in his new business. He had the support of many within the recycling industry, he says, and his wife had also encouraged him to start the business.

For nearly 25 years, Chen has grown G&T Trading by focusing on exporting recovered paper from the East and West coasts. The firm trades mostly old corrugated containers, or OCC; old newspapers, or ONP; mixed paper; and double-lined kraft, or DLK.

Chen says G&T Trading’s major end markets are in Southeast Asia, including Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. He adds that China had been one of his major end markets until about five years ago, when that country began to implement restrictions on recovered paper imports.

As a trading company with five employees that handles more than 4,000 containers (or about 100,000 metric tons) per year for export, Chen’s team describes G&T Trading as having a “close-knit, family- oriented environment.”

Services: Brokerage services for old corrugated containers, old newspaper, double-lined kraft, mixed paper, magazines and sorted office paper

“Since we are a small business, we work closely together and communicate with each other often,” says Sandy Zhang, the accounting manager at G&T Trading, who is also Chen’s daughter.

Zhang and her colleagues, Vice President of Operations Billie Lam and Operations Manager Tina Wain, who also is Chen’s daughter, all say Chen’s passion for the recycling industry is very evident through his hard work to grow the company and the industry.

“What makes G&T Trading stand out is, quite simply put, George Chen,” Zhang says. “It is rare to see someone who is so passionate about the recycling business as much as George [is]. He has a can-do attitude, and nobody works harder or is more loyal than him.”

She adds, “If you have ever met George, you will know him for his cowboy hats and outfits, his infectious smile and laughter and his corny jokes.”

Personality aside, Chen says providing good service helps to set his trading firm apart. “People know G&T Trading and trust my service,” he says. “Plus, I have a very close relationship with the shipping lines, so that when the shipping lines have a problem, I still have space. And any challenges with service, my staff tries to overcome all the problems to do the best job for the company to help my suppliers to move the paper to the mills.”

Building relationships at industry association meetings and events also has helped G&T Trading to grow. Since G&T Trading started, Chen says he has been involved with the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries’ (ISRI’s) Paper Stock Industries (PSI) chapter and with the New Jersey Paper Recycling Association (NJPRA). Members of those associations say Chen is eager to network with other professionals.

“The first time I met him, he came up to me, shook my hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m George Chen. I’m everyone’s friend,’” says Bill Lehman, business development manager for recycling at Houston-based Waste Management and a member of NJPRA. “That was his mantra with introducing himself. And he is everyone’s friend. He’s just that kind of guy.”

Throughout most of his career, Chen says he has served in leadership positions with PSI and NJPRA.

“It was so hard in the beginning of [the] business, so I decided to join ISRI’s PSI and the New Jersey Paper Recycling Association to build up my business network,” he says. “I also volunteered to help the organizations because I studied public relations at Shih Hsin University in Taiwan,” Chen adds.

His colleagues who are involved with PSI and NJPRA say Chen played a big role in helping to grow the membership of both groups when he served in leadership positions with the associations. Chen served as PSI’s president right in the middle of the Great Recession from 2008 to 2010.

“He was at the helm of PSI in one of the most difficult chapters of PSI’s history,” says Kevin Duncombe, president of California-based Western Pacific Pulp & Paper Co. Duncombe also served as PSI president from 2010 to 2012.

He says the chapter’s leaders worked very hard to provide the industry with education on ever-changing market conditions in those years. That effort paid off, and Duncombe says Chen was able to hold the organization together and even grow it to 125 members during his presidency.

“He increased membership at a time when it was tough to get anyone to join anything. George really worked hard and was very successful at convincing people to be a part of something. I mean it sincerely—George held it together.”

From 1997 until 2020, Chen was president of NJPRA. Waste Management’s Lehman says Chen was instrumental in strengthening the regional association during his tenure as president, regularly organizing speakers and presentations for its members.

The group’s members “are feathers in George’s cap,” he says. “There was a point where the New York Paper Dealers Association kind of went by the wayside due to poor membership, but George was instrumental in keeping the New Jersey faction going. We took a lot of the New York membership into New Jersey. George was definitely involved with making that happen and keeping it running. We were running before COVID, doing very well. [Chen] was able to keep membership as high as it was. We would always have 50 to 60 people there.”

Beyond helping boost membership in industry associations, Duncombe says Chen helped lobby with ISRI against the black liquor tax incentive in 2009 (tax credits available under the “Alternative Fuels Provision” of the 2005 highway bill that were intended to support the use of alternative fuels that benefited paper mills using virgin materials and created a financial disincentive to paper recycling). He says Chen also helped to update PSI’s bylaws and grade specifications.

Duncombe adds, “George will fight hard for whatever cause he feels is necessary. He is a voice for paper exporters at ISRI meetings.”

While Chen has stepped back from his leadership roles in PSI and NJPRA, he remains active in those associations.

In July 2019, he volunteered to join ISRI’s Adina Renee Adler, who was then assistant vice president for international affairs, when she met with Indonesian government officials, inspection agencies and domestic recyclers and consumers in Jakarta, Indonesia, to better understand the nation’s policies surrounding paper scrap imports and speak on behalf of the association. By helping serve as an advocate on the trip, Chen says he hoped that it would help him gain new knowledge on Indonesia’s processes and procedures for paper scrap imports.

“Having this knowledge and understanding would help me engage in international trade in Indonesia better,” Chen says.

When Chen and Adler went to Indonesia, the nation recently revised its recovered paper import standard.

“The government wanted to direct preshipment inspection companies to inspect materials for a 0.5 percent prohibitives tolerance,” Adler says. “At the time, Indonesia could only source 40 to 45 percent of recovered fiber from domestic sources, so they were heavily dependent on international sourcing to meet demand needs.”

Adler and Chen met with officials to encourage Indonesian government officials to use ISRI’s scrap specifications as its guide for contaminants and outthrows in imported recovered fiber and to review the implications of the nation’s proposed strict contamination policy. During the conversations, Adler says she provided officials with ISRI’s perspective, and Chen provided his trading expertise.

“George was instrumental in providing a technical perspective on the infeasibility of the proposed inspection regime while also noting the market demand in Indonesia for the high-quality materials processed in the United States,” Adler says. “We talked about all of the issues in the trade of recovered fiber. With the questions they had on understanding the marketplace, George would speak up and talk about the realities. He talked about unique issues with the preshipment inspection process and cargo loading. I was so glad to have him there.”

As of June 2020, Indonesia confirmed a 2 percent contamination tolerance for all scrap imports, which ISRI labeled as a win for the industry.

Adler, who is now ISRI’s vice president for advocacy, says she is grateful for Chen’s support in working to advocate for the U.S. scrap recycling industry’s perspective to Indonesian officials.

“I learn with the help of [ISRI’s] members,” she says. “George supported our industry as an advocate and made sure the team was also well-educated. That’s the role he played at the meeting.”

“I thought it was a very successful trip, as it allowed me to present all the new information to the members of the paper recycling industries,” Chen says.

Chen says he is optimist about opportunities to expand G&T Trading this year. He says recovered paper markets in Southeast Asia have been strong so far in 2021, particularly for OCC.

“Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam have strong demands of OCC and other recovered paper,” Chen says.

But export markets also present challenges as of mid-May. Chen says he would describe the export market as more of a “buyer’s market” for the time being. He says India has decreased its buying of recovered paper in recent weeks because of the pandemic. Indonesia also has slowed its buying in conjunction with the Ramadan holiday in late April and May.

Additionally, securing ocean shipping has been very difficult this year. Chen says many shipping lines continue to cut recovered paper bookings, and vessels have been delayed. Despite the current situation, he says he’s not too pessimistic about overseas shipping.

“Due to our long relationships with many shipping lines, G&T still continues to get support from them, but the bookings were limited in May. Sometimes I still need to call the shipping line salesperson for help,” Chen says. “COVID-19 [has been] very challenging for G&T Trading. But we try to control the steady and very regular shipments to all the countries.”

He continues, “Right now, G&T’s major job is to keep the regular tonnage going through and [have] great relationships with the shipping lines. For 2021 and 2022, we’ll continue to do that, and we will try to gather more market share for each country for recovered paper.”

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at msmalley@gie.net.

Nickel and stainless steel are on course to lose some markets while gaining new ones, but the paths diverge depending on the continent.

The phrase “It’s complicated” can apply to many endeavors in the scrap industry, but perhaps the foremost example is tied to the collection, sorting and marketing of stainless steel and other nickel-bearing alloys.

Producers and recyclers of this expanded family of metals have long used the adjective “specialty” as a descriptor. Based on presentations given at the ISRI2021 online convention hosted by the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) in late April, this specialization is poised to continue.

The two stainless steel and nickel industry analysts who spoke at the ISRI2021 Nickel and Stainless Spotlight described a stainless steel market with a very different production method in China versus most of the rest of the world. Additionally, they said nickel, stainless steel and specialty alloys applications could face significantly different prospects if the global electric vehicle (EV) revolution picks up speed.

China makes about half of the world’s stainless steel, but it imports very little of the rest of the world’s stainless scrap because of the production method decided upon by its large-volume producers.

Stainless steel in China is made predominantly by melting nickel pig iron (NPI) made from ores mined most often in Indonesia, the Philippines and other nearby nations. When it comes to major stainless steelmaking nations’ scrap usage rates, Markus Moll of Austria-based Steel & Metals Market Research GmbH (SMR), said “two worlds” exist.

While China uses less than 25 percent scrap as feedstock because of its NPI reliance, scrap carries from 70 to 75 percent of the metallics load in stainless production in Europe. The United States and India, meanwhile, can consume as much as 80 percent scrap in their stainless production. In the U.S., this is because of electric arc furnace (EAF) technology, and in India it is because of induction furnace methods.

The result for U.S.-based scrap processors and exporters is that stainless steel scrap has not been exported in the same volumes as aluminum or copper scrap, even before the Chinese government introduced quotas and restrictions in 2019.

Moll said “11 percent of stainless steel scrap was consumed on a different continent [from] where it was generated” in 2020. Common trading patterns include Russia and some of its neighboring nations supplying scrap to Western Europe, with the U.S. predominantly sending scrap to Asian nations, including India, South Korea and Taiwan.

Of the stainless scrap generated last year, Moll estimated 36 percent was obsolete scrap, 32 percent was prime or factory-generated scrap, 23 percent was revert scrap that never left the melt shop and 9 percent was marketed as blended scrap, making its origin difficult to determine.

Demand for nickel-bearing scrap has been ramping up in the U.S. as North American Stainless, based in Ghent, Kentucky, and other producers return to output levels closer to those they enjoyed before the COVID-19-related downturn.

On the scrap export front, it is not clear whether West Coast recyclers in the U.S. could start receiving inquiries from mills in China since that nation has approved the shipment of three grades of stainless steel scrap for importation in 2021.

Although scrap prices might not always reflect it, Moll said a “higher availability of high-quality scrap is needed” as stainless steel producers and the manufacturers that use stainless steel seek lower carbon footprints.

While better scale pricing could fetch some additional stainless scrap (or prevent it from being blended with carbon steel scrap), Moll said the future also could lead to “green ferroalloys” produced similarly to how hot-briquetted iron (HBI) and direct-reduced iron (DRI) are made for the carbon steel sector.

The transition from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) that appears to be gaining momentum globally will yield winners and losers in the nickel and stainless steel sectors.

More has been written about nickel content in EV batteries than about several other aspects of how either nickel or stainless steel might fare if ICE vehicle production plummets. SMR’s forecast calls for stainless steel demand from the transportation sector to drop during the next five years.

“This is very clearly the e-car issue,” Moll said. “If you look at a car today, it has about 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of stainless steel for a normal passenger car. Out of that, 30 kilograms (66 pounds) is the exhaust system. Other applications are fuel lines and engine valves, the head gasket—all these applications depend on the combustion engine.”

*Average monthly settlement price per metric ton, cash buyer; source: London Metal Exchange, www.lme.com

He added, “So, in an e-car, you still have hose clamps and trim, but it’s probably only 20 percent of what you have in a combustion engine car.”

Moll said he did not see a particularly bright future for hybrid cars, which retain some of the stainless components, calling the hybrid powertrain “just a bridge technology. In five years, the [EV] batteries will be so good, nobody needs a hybrid car. In 10 years, nobody will [buy] a hybrid car.”

The alternative energy market holds some good news for stainless producers when the attention shifts to ships, trucks, buses and heavy vehicles that use larger battery cells. The housings for these cells typically are made of stainless steel.

Moll’s fellow presenter, Alina Racu, a Switzerland-based market analyst with Russia-based Nornickel, said EV sales globally rebounded in the second half of 2020, with Europe and China being “the epicenters of growth,” while North America exhibited modest growth. The global figures demonstrate EV momentum, with 26 percent year-on-year growth in 2020 compared with 2019 and a 78 percent jump in sales in December 2020 compared with December 2019, Racu said.

She cited legislation and stimulus plans as among the drivers behind the switch to EVs. While Europe and its Green Deal point to that continent’s intentions, whether Joe Biden and his “Build Back Better” plan or CLEAN (Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation) Future Act can make it through the U.S. Congress with some of their electrification incentives intact remains to be seen.

The growth of EV sales represents just one aspect of a potential “decarbonization” effort tied to the Paris Agreement and its target dates to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Moll and Racu referred to national and global goals to reduce GHG emissions as factors that seem poised to alter the dueling hemispheres model.

Moll said making stainless steel with primary materials predominating, as in China, produces carbon dioxide (CO2) at a ratio of 4.3 to 1. That contrasts with the 1.1 to 1 ratio belonging to scrap-fed production. Policies such as the Green Deal in Europe and others being made in response to the Paris Agreement are leading to a “border adjustment mechanism to prevent CO2 leakage,” he said.

Racu said the conversion processes often used by Chinese companies to produce nickel pure enough to use in EV batteries also are problematic in creating large amounts of CO2, sulfur dioxide and other GHGs.

As in stainless steel production, nickel refining methods also are being influenced by corporate goals and government mandates. “While there are multiple sources of nickel supply coming up, their usage in the batteries sector will depend on compliance with ESG (environment, social and governance) standards,” she said. “Western [original equipment manufacturers] will likely prioritize ESG-compliant nickel over alternatives with high carbon footprints,” Racu added.

On the battery front, she predicted that the low-nickel lithium iron phosphate batteries being manufactured in China will not win out over emerging, upgraded nickel cobalt manganese batteries or other lithium-ion configurations that are being used around the world.

To what extent can scrap recyclers expect to get involved with recovering nickel and other metals from these emerging batteries? The answer could depend on whether EV makers insist upon closed-loop systems for their batteries. Repurposing, or finding a second use for EV batteries, also could disrupt collection.

Racu said forecasting how EV battery recycling will take shape is difficult in part because current volumes of such end-of-life batteries “are very small,” with EV recycling “in its very early stages.”

She showed three different scenarios, however, tied to varying levels of EV sales, the percentage of batteries that are repurposed and the collection rate. In the most aggressive scenario, EV battery makers could reach a point where from 42 to 49 percent of the nickel used in new batteries consists of recycled-content nickel. The other scenarios, however, placed this percentage in a more modest 12 to 21 percent range.

How the EV market influences nickel and stainless steel demand provides just one more fault line that could lead to the end of some scrap flows and the creation of new ones.

The author is the senior editor with the Recycling Today Media Group and can be contacted at btaylor@gie.net.

Scrap University launched to provide the industry with consistent education on metals classification.

Scrap recycling is not something that is taught in school, and no major university offers a major in scrap processing and trading. Many industry professionals either grew up in the industry or learned on the job.

Brad Rudover, a partner in Detroit Scrap Consulting Services Ltd. in Vancouver, grew up in the industry. His family owned Berrick Trading Corp., a scrap yard in Detroit.

“I spent a great deal of time there but was never paid. [My] dad would teach me stuff, but he couldn’t explain to me the difference between No. 1 and No. 2, honey and ebony,” Rudover says. “So, I kind of went through my whole life having to learn on my own.”

On the other hand, Kate Fraser entered the scrap industry when she went to work for ABC Recycling, which has locations in British Columbia, as an office administrator. She knew nothing about the industry.

“I started in the industry trying to put together a new ERP (enterprise resource planning) system for the company, and I recognized quickly, ‘How do I get training?’ There was no training,” she says. “I was bugging the CEO or someone else on, ‘What’s this?’ And you would get different answers for similar things. It was frustrating and confusing.”

Rudover and Fraser got to know each other when they worked for British Columbia’s Richmond Steel Recycling in the mid-2010s. Rudover was the company’s nonferrous manager, and Fraser was an operations analyst and facility manager. Both recognized that scrap recyclers had different answers for how to classify different commodities.

“We recognized that there was nowhere to reach out,” Fraser says regarding training on metals identification. “I would go to ISRI’s website and its specification document, but that didn’t help to train guys working in the yard.”

In 2020, Rudover decided it would be a good idea to partner with Fraser to provide a training tool that scrap processors could use to consistently train employees to classify commodities. Rudover and Fraser had moved on from Richmond Steel Recycling at that time and were working for different companies, but both agreed it would be a good time to develop a resource that could be used by processors to train everyone from laborers to managers.

“I had been kicking around the idea for a couple years, and back in February of last year, I reached out to Kate since she had scrap knowledge and the right mix of skills to get the project off the ground,” Rudover adds. “As the pandemic hit, it allowed us to focus on building the course and block out everything else.”

By fall of 2020, they launched Scrap University as a resource for processors to educate their employees virtually.

Rudover and Fraser say they spent the majority of 2020 filming educational videos for Scrap University at Rypac Metal Recycling in Surrey, British Columbia.

“My mentor, friend and Scrap University Professor Craig Merritt allowed us to film at his yard,” Rudover says. “He has been an advocate for Scrap University from the beginning. We would go to the yard three to four times a week and shoot video to create the course.”

To date, Scrap University offers one program, the Certified Scrap Metal Professional (CSMP), which consists of multiple courses.

The program’s first course is a scrap yard orientation that reviews ferrous and nonferrous metals; operations basics, such as units of measure, scale types and weights, personal protective equipment, unloading, forklifts and material handlers; and basics on scale tickets, weight deductions, purchase prices and types of software used in the industry. After the orientation, the program walks students through identifying specific metal commodities: tin, heavy melting steel, cast iron, busheling, manganese, 6061 aluminum, zorba, twitch, honey, ebony, 2205 stainless and many more.

Fraser says each course feature videos to showcase materials in an actual scrap yard, text that describes the commodity and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries’ (ISRI’s) actual code for that particular commodity. She says she hopes the course can help connect the dots between the formalized ISRI codes and street terms used for different commodities.

“When you’re exporting something, you often use the ISRI code. But when you’re in the yard, nobody knows what ‘tutu’ is, for example,” she says. “So, in our program, we try to break down both sides. We want to pay respect to ISRI for creating the terms like ‘darth’ or ‘vader.’ Most guys in the scrap yard or bringing scrap don’t use the term ‘darth,’ but if you say, ‘ballasts,’ then that’s ‘darth,’ and if you say, ‘sealed units,’ then that’s ‘vader.’”

Rudover and Fraser aren’t the only instructors providing education through the platform. Rudover says Scrap University has other “professors” from the industry who share their insights.

He says Jennifer Betts of Argus Media, headquartered in London, teaches some segments on ferrous scrap, and Nick Snyder of United Metals Recycling, Caldwell, Idaho, teaches segments on brass and copper scrap.

Betts, who is vice president of business development for the Metals division at Argus Media, got her start in the scrap industry 15 years ago at David J. Joseph Co., Cincinnati. She says she did business with Rudover in the past and was excited to provide her knowledge on the industry for training purposes.

“A course does not exist on the industry—you basically have to work at a yard or trading company and learn from your colleagues. There’s not a course anywhere for you to learn how to … identify scrap,” Betts says.

She continues, “I thought this idea was really interesting. I think it would be great for educating the next generation or new employees.”

Since it launched last year, several scrap processors have enrolled employees in Scrap University.

Chad Sutter, owner of Sutter Metals in Tacoma, Washington, says he began using Scrap University as part of his onboarding process for new employees earlier this year. The company operates a scrap yard and two feeder yards in the Puget Sound area with a team of 55 employees.

Sutter says hiring and training has been challenging in recent years. He says it’s not always possible to hire people with scrap industry experience, so he wants to use Scrap University to help new hires from outside the industry learn more quickly.

“Particularly in our region, the Pacific Northwest, getting people to work in our yards or warehouse given the climate up here is challenging,” Sutter says. “It’s not like California—sunny and 70 degrees 300 days a year. Up here, it’s a big deal to have somebody have a potential yard position or warehouse position where weather might be inclement 160 days out of the year. Our applicant pool dramatically shrinks. To keep the facility running, onboarding is a huge part of what we are doing with staff.

He continues, “If you walk to a scrap yard day one and don’t know a lick of what you’re doing, you spend two to three months job shadowing before you can get to sort and make mill spec packages. [The course] helps with quality concerns. I’m not saying employees won’t need to job shadow, but it has cost benefits to us, cutting down training time by two-thirds.”

Sutter adds that Scrap University’s course also has served as a refresher for him and his more tenured employees.

Fraser adds that Scrap University’s CSMP program “is meant for everybody” within the scrap industry.

“We had a fellow reach out who owns a business, and he doesn’t have time to train his people,” she says. “It’s a small business. He wanted to go through [the program] because he stumbled into the scrap business. He’s making money, but he recognized he’s not making all he could because he doesn’t know all the metals classifications. He took [the course] himself. Now, he can have staff trained as well, and he can delegate with confidence.”

Looking ahead, Rudover says he hopes to develop more programs and courses for Scrap University. He’d also like industry associations, such as the Canadian Association of Recycling Industries or ISRI, to offer the program to members.

His overall goal, though, is for the industry to have a formal credential for scrap recycling knowledge.

Rudover says many industries have certifications or licenses, such as certified public accountant, and others have formal college programs that result in degrees. “The scrap business is one of the only businesses that doesn’t have a degree,” he says.

“Our program has now created that ‘something’ where [at] the backside of your title or the end of your name, you can put ‘CSMP.’ We’ve raised the bar in the industry by providing this information. You’ll be more educated, more diligent and more efficient,” he continues.

“We’re now starting to see CSMP in some of our graduates’ signatures.”

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at msmalley@gie.net.