Few companies in the recycling business have PhDs, physicists, and metallurgists on staff. But David Spencer, CEO and founder of WTE Corporation, said housing that kind of brainpower drove his company beyond the waste-to-energy business and into the business of complex recycling for metals and plastics.

David Spencer

“Our curiosity drives us to find better ways of doing things in the recycling industry,” said Spencer. “We’ve formed collaborations with other companies and brought together scientists to address a potential opportunity no one else has.”

Spencer founded WTE with the intention of building small-scale waste-energy processing facilities, but because of a lack of financial capacity, the venture was not successful. From there, the company moved into the consulting business, working with companies to fix recycling plants using operating and construction experience staff members gained from years of working with similar companies.

The company then evolved to taking on the operations of major waste-to-energy facilities. “When the plants needed to upgrade their air emission control systems, we didn’t think they were capable of making the necessary capital investments,” said Spencer. “WTE didn’t have enough money to buy out the plants, so we decided to buy moribund recycling facilities instead.”

In 1990, WTE purchased two such facilities. The plastics operation the company bought was losing $3 million per year on revenues of $6 million, and the metals business was close to bankruptcy. Now, both facilities are profitable, giving the management at WTE the chance to move their focus to the high-technology recycling business.

Creating a need
The mission of WTE is to apply technology and commercial experience by converting recycling challenges into value-added business opportunities. Spencer and his team partnered with National Recovery Technologies (NRT) to push the possibilities of producing high-quality recycled materials beyond the plastics market and into metals.

“For many years, NRT was in the business of using optoelectronics to sort materials by color or chemistry, primarily in the plastics business,” said Spencer. “We teamed with them to apply their pre-existing technology to the metals business.”

The joint venture, named Spectramet, is developing technology to analyze metals while they fly through the air at a rate of 500 feet per minute, identifying exactly what the composition is and sorting the metals by alloy type. Spectramet uses six different technologies with various sensors and sorting objectives to produce high-grade qualities of scrap.

“When the scrap is re-melted in the furnaces, you want the input to be the same as the output,” said Spencer. “By doing that, you can use more scrap, which provides environmental benefits, energy efficiency, and lowers the cost of production.”

Although Spencer is not looking to get into the melting business, he and his team are developing the technology to analyze the composition of the liquid metal chemistry; if the material being melted starts to run off specification, users would immediately know and make adjustments to the chemistry by adding other kinds of scrap or alloying elements to bring it back online quickly.

“We’ve developed a company called Melt Cognition, anticipating an industry need for this kind of technology,” said Spencer. “The technology also enables shorter melting times, increasing the level of productivity at for any given furnace.”

Creating a customer base
To create credibility in a new marketplace, Spencer and the company’s president, Scott Mellen, developed a strategic advisory board of people from industry groups, academia, recycling, and sensor technologies. The 15-member advisory board includes the president of Metal Casting Technology, a joint venture of General Motors & Hitchiner, an officer in the American Foundrymen Society, past president of ASM International (previously American Society for Metals), and the former head of the metallurgy department at MIT, to name a few.

“Producing high-quality recycled materials is so complex that no single person can know enough in all of the combined cross-disciplinary fields to get the job done,” Spencer said. “When you bring a team of intelligent people together, the possibilities are endless.”

Spencer’s ability to know when to ask for help also brought Mellen to the company. Since accepting the presidency of WTE in 2002, Mellen increased the company’s focus on profitability and developed its current managed-growth strategy. Spencer said one of his objectives has been to create a balance between strong operations talent and creative talent, and the partnership he’s developed with Mellen accomplishes that goal.

“I have the time to work on more novel innovative things while Mellen manages and adds creativity to the operating side of the business,” said Spencer. “I know when I hire people who have strengths that complement my own I can open the door to high-tech avenues of innovation with funding support from folks such as the National Science Foundation and Advanced Technology Programs, while Mellen adds innovation, control, and predictability into our day-to-day operations.”