As part of the MORPHO project consortium meeting in Brussels on 9 and 10 November, one of the partners, Comet Group, organised a visit to its facilities. On Wednesday 9 November, the MORPHO partners visited the Comet Traitements recycling plant in Obourg, after a morning of meetings and reviews on the status of the project according to its different work packages.
The Belgian partner, who defines himself as a family-owned industrial group, specializing in trading ferrous and non-ferrous metals and the derivatives thereof, has developed new technologies and an industrial capacity that make them a leading company in Europe in terms of materials recycling. Today, the COMET Group consists of about thirty companies across Belgium and France. It includes a range of high-performance facilities that enabled it to achieve unrivalled recycling percentages, with a 98.4% of valuation rate. Increasing the life cycle of materials is a value that is very much present in the plant visited by the MORPHO consortium.
The visit focused specifically on the company’s recycled materials, which handles 1,200,000 tonnes per year. The Comet Group and its subsidiaries process a very wide range of materials. From ferrous and non-ferrous materials to plastics issued from shredder residues, going through end-of-life vehicles, electrical waste, electronic equipment, and tyres. The consortium was able to see their 7,000 hp shredder, the most powerful shredder in Europe. Thanks to this shredder at the Châtelet plant, Comet has become one of the major suppliers for the recovered iron and steel industry in Belgium, Europe and all over the world.
Yesterday’s waste converted into tomorrow’s secondary raw materials
Of particular interest to the MORPHO consortium was the visit to COMET’s “Phoenix” pyrolysis plant, where they are putting into practice two innovative technologies to recycle carbon fiber composites, the most popular aircraft structural material nowadays.
Subscribe to our newsletter to not miss our next article and materials explaining the process COMET is successfully testing for the MORPHO project.
- Laser-induced disassembly process
- Pyrolysis technology.