GRT adds CDE line in Canada

A production line designed by United Kingdom-based CDE Global has helped the GRT Resource Regeneration Facility in Nanaimo, British Columbia, divert some 70,000 metric tons of displaced soil materials from landfills in the past 15 months.

GRT and CDE say their cooperation on the system “has led to the responsible recovery and recycling of a range of clean and contaminated soils in southern British Columbia.”

As urban development sites are scarce in British Columbia, available land often requires soil removal to remediate trace contamination. In other cases, excavated material isn’t structurally suitable to be reused as fill.

According to CDE, GRT’s founders recognized an opportunity for resource recovery in the region and turned to CDE as a vendor who could assist the firm in realizing its environmental and fiscal goals. GRT chose to invest in CDE technology in part because it would support the company’s research and development efforts to offer coal removal from soil—a main contaminant in the Nanaimo region.

GRT receives raw feed material from throughout the region, resulting from excavations for residential developments, brownfield/remediation sites, tunneling projects, hydrovac trucks, and river or ocean dredge projects.

GRT CEO Peter Reid says, “CDE has been an excellent partner to GRT. Starting with dredge dewatering, CDE has provided a framework for GRT to add on various technologies in turning excess contaminated soils to aggregate for future use in construction projects.”

Reid continues, “Between June 2021 and June 2022, GRT’s waste-to-resource facility diverted 70,000 metric tons from local landfills. We are proud that our partnership with CDE has produced such a positive impact on the environment.”

Adrian Convery, business development manager at CDE, says, “GRT’s business model transforms the existing value chain in Vancouver Island. It has been a great experience to have worked with a team that shares our values and objectives from the inception of this partnership, and CDE look forward to developing this partnership in the near future.”

GRT’s facility uses a CDE wash plant that includes a CDE feed hopper and an AggMax modular logwasher. The AggMax combines prescreening, scrubbing and organics removal within a Rotomax logwasher, offering sizing, stockpiling, fines recovery and filtrates removal on a compact chassis

An EvoWash sand washing and classification unit with modular hydro cyclone technology gives GRT control of silt cut points, designed to help GRT produce high-quality in-spec materials. Combined with CDE’s Infinity dewatering screen technology, it results in an increased power to weight ratio for lower running costs through reduced power consumption.

An AquaCycle is a high-rate thickener and primary stage water management system that recycles up to 90 percent of the process water for reuse in the system. GRT combines the AquaCycle with its own wastewater treatment technologies to remove environmental contaminants from the water, say the companies. “This minimizes discharges to the environment, which is in line with GRT’s ethos of environmental responsibility,” states CDE.

The plant produces 40 tons per hour of reusable and saleable products that are supplied to the local construction industry, including sand, pea gravel, oversized rock and 4-inch-minus rock. Leftover contaminated material is currently incorporated into GRT’s clay output, then transferred to a provincially permitted facility to be beneficially reused as landfill cover. The companies say GRT also is exploring ways to extract more benefit from this product.

CDE, which has a North American office in Texas, describes itself as a provider of wet processing equipment for recycling operations, quarries, and mines globally.