Garbage compactors
Introduction
A compactor is a machine "Machine (technology)") or mechanism used to reduce the size of material such as waste material or biomass through compaction. Businesses and public places such as hospitals (also in some homes) often use a garbage compactor to reduce the volume of garbage they produce. A baler-wrapper compactor is often used to make compacted and wrapped bales in order to improve logistics.[1].
Typically driven by hydraulics, compactors come in many shapes and sizes. At "Landfill (garbage)" landfills, for example, a large tractor (usually a converted front-end loader with some variant of an excavator blade attached) with spiked steel wheels called a landfill compactor is used to drive over waste deposited by waste collection vehicles (WCVs).
The WCVs themselves incorporate a compaction mechanism which is used to increase the payload "Cargo (transport)") of the vehicle and reduce the number of times it has to be emptied. This usually takes the form of hydraulically powered sliding plates that sweep the collection hopper and compress the material into what has already been loaded.
Different compactors are used in scrap metal processing, the most well-known being the automobile crusher. Such devices can be of the "pancake" type, in which a scrap automobile is flattened by a huge hydraulically driven plate that descends, or the bale press, in which the automobile is compressed from several directions until it resembles a large cube.
Commercial use
Many retail and service businesses, such as fast food, restaurants and hotels, use compactors to reduce the volume of non-recyclable waste, as well as to curb nuisances such as rodents and odors. In the hospitality industry, tolerance for such annoyances is particularly low. These compactors usually have electrical and hydraulic operation, with many load configurations. The most popular charging configurations include the following:.
These compactors are almost exclusively of welded steel construction for two reasons: durability under pressure and exposure to the elements, as the compactors are installed completely outdoors or sometimes under a covered loading dock.
Agricultural use
As a means of preserving and storing forage, compaction baler-wrappers are used to exclude oxygen from the forage and wrap it in an airtight film. Without access to air, the forage stays fresher for longer.