Company News...

News Release January 2005
 

Applied Recovery Systems, Inc. is awarded a major contract by a leading automotive wheel manufacture in North America.  This contract is to supply equipment to prepare and briquette aluminum chips suitable for melting in a "state of the art" stack (tower) melter.  This style of tower melter was recently purchased, and currently being installed, in part to specifically melt machined chips in the form of briquettes.  The wheel manufacture's Corporate Director of Engineering states, "our company researched the best and newest technology available to maximize our melting capabilities of our machined chips to include; lowered contamination/ oxidation, attain higher recoveries, as well as eliminating potential environmental and health hazards associated with older technologies."  The company had for years melted loose treated chips by a means of expensive/elaborate washing, drying, and the submerging via vacuum pumps, of millions of loose chips directly into molten aluminum.

 The new technology involves automatically loading near solid briquettes into the dry vertical shaft of the tower melter.  The tower melter utilizes waste gases from the holding well to pre-heat the charge of material in the stack and essentially gains free (otherwise lost in traditional reverbs) BTU's from the well.   This new process has eliminated the old process of washing and drying of chips, since the briquettes are pre-heated in the shaft, and are not introduced directly into molten aluminum.  The briquettes are combined with other scrap returns (wheels, etc.) and only reach the molten bath of aluminum when the material in the stack reaches a temperature that melts the scrap briquettes into liquid aluminum.  At that point the briquettes transition from the vertical shaft to the hearth, and eventually drip into the bath as new aluminum.  Testing showed that chemistry improved, as well as the recovery when compared to the older technology.

 This major supplier of automotive wheels plans to incorporate this new technology at their other numerous facilities, and ultimately give them a competitive advantage in a very competitive market.  Applied Recovery Systems, Inc. will integrate this system with their other chip handling system, as well as a new central coolant filtration system.  ARS's VP Sales/Marketing Steven Vejil states; "it was a natural partnership between the manufacture of the aluminum stack melter, and ARS.  This application will open up many opportunities in the aluminum die cast industry to supply complete turnkey installations, and improve the overall efficiency, quality and greatly reduce the cost to melt machined chips.  We plan to continue to utilize our relationships with our key partners to supply customers with complete chip handling systems, central coolant filtration systems, and the most beneficial means of melting their scrap."   The overall capacity of the chip briquetting system is 6,000 pounds per hour.  Applied Recovery Systems, Inc. is the leading supplier in North America of Foundry briquetters capable of producing near solid briquettes.