US-based engineering and manufacturing specialist Johns Manville (Denver; www.jm.com) has set up a thermal recycling unit for waste glass fibre, in its engineered products plant, in Trnava / Slovakia. The new unit, part of an EUR 10m investment programme, consists of a warehousing area, feeding and transportation equipment, shredder, burning chamber and milling. It has a projected recycling capacity of more than three tonnes per hour.

After processing, the recycled glass powder is re-fed into the glass production process on-site as raw material. The recycling process is expected to keep more than 10,000 t/y of waste out of the landfills.

Elena Hrivikova, Johns Manvilles’ environment manager for Europe/Asia, said, “The primary goal of this investment is to achieve a positive environmental impact by reducing the landfilling of glass-fibre waste.”