The Discovery of Implosion
Innovators in Glass Reprocessing

In the mid 1990’s international maritime law was changed to prohibit the dumping of waste at sea by merchant shipping, - a practice that had been routinely taking place for centuries.

Soon after a large cruise liner was photographed illegally dumping waste off the coast of Florida by a US spotter plane. The owners were subsequently fined $1million, but the US judge took the enlightened approach of offering a half million-dollar rebate if the cruise line agreed to implement a total waste management system.

The company therefore engaged specialist consultants to design and install state of the art processing systems for the major waste streams encountered on board.

However, with up to 3000 passengers each creating an average of 2.2 kgs (5lbs) of waste glass per day in the form of champagne and wine bottles, glass presented a unique problem. It cannot be incinerated and occupies the same space whether full or empty. So it required to be safely and efficiently “crushed”, and then stored until it could be offloaded.

As no suitable equipment met the specification, consultant engineer Steve Whettingsteel was engaged to design a rugged processor that would reduce the overall volume of glass, and make it safe to handle. Glass is naturally very abrasive, but the processor had to be reliable and low maintenance.

It was during the testing phase that the unique Implosion process was first discovered to densify glass down to 5% of its original volume, and also render it totally sharp free. Further trials also proved Implosion had both a low power demand, and low usage of wear parts.

The Imploder proved a success, Krysteline was formed and the process patented worldwide.  Imploders became widely adopted by the cruise industry and later NATO warships. Land based Imploders were developed and scaled up to include high performance systems capable of purifying 30,000 tonnes of glass per annum into high value crystals, which have a range of uses in industry.

Krysteline now offers a complete family of Imploders from small single bottle feed system up to a large fixed plant, all of which utilise the original Implosion process.
   
©2010 Krysteline Ltd.