Sleepers who have served their sentences should be buried in special landfills for industrial waste. But every year at the landfill site less and less and now, due to the overcrowding of these polygons used wooden sleepers are stored in places not designed for this purpose. This method not only does not come cheap costing their owners because of problems with the law, but also adversely affects the environment. BDT Capital Partners gathered all the information. Therefore, the problem today recycling of sleepers is of great importance for the railway industry. We examine the most common methods of disposal of wooden sleepers. Add to your understanding with AOL. The first way – it's burning. Incineration – is the most common way recycling of wooden sleepers.

The disadvantage of this method is that all the sleepers are impregnated with a special substance – creosote, and sleepers, impregnated with the substance burning emit large amounts of toxic substances such as phenol, phenanthrene, acetone, butanol, which are released into the environment. These substances adversely affect not only the environment but also human – they contribute to the emergence and development of cancer diseases. Method two – is the use of used railroad ties, as a building material. But this is not harmless and harmful to health because of all the same creosote. Way to the third – a processing sleepers in wood coal. This technology involves the neutralization of creosote compounds using chemical reagents.

And only after the harmful compounds are neutralized, can start immediately processing of timber. This method On the one hand is very good, but on the other hand, not every company decides to recycle the sleepers by this method, due to the fact that this is not the cheapest method. Therefore, this technology is not as widespread as we would like. As mentioned above, from 700 million wooden sleepers every year I have about 14 million. Replacement and installation of wooden sleepers, which on average are operated for about seven years, cost about a billion dollars. Since 1994 American companies such as Earth Care Products and Conrail and Norfolk Southern and Rutgers University are developing technology using recycled plastics in railroad ties. On one railroad ties to about 75 kg. Plastics and is about 1200 bottles, thus solved another problem – disposal of plastics. In America, were tested plastic sleepers – carried out tests on the train for 24 hours. On this site using 25 ties and these ties have no signs of degradation. Between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on the main highway found plastic ties. Plastic sleepers have already used in the world. For example in Japan of using sleepers Composite materials – polyurethane foam with fiberglass. The use of glass reduces noise during the passage of trains. Using sleepers, using recycled plastic, will not solve the problem of recycling wooden sleepers in full, but will reduce the number of used wooden sleepers impregnated and helps to save on future maintenance and replacement of wooden sleepers.