Municipal Waste Sorting Equipment worked example

Capacity Gap at 98% sort-line availability: a worked example in municipal waste sorting equipment

This scenario runs the capacity gap calculation on the strong side: 98% sort-line availability, with every other input held at its documented default. Use it when a contract is up for bid or inbound tonnage is growing and you need to know whether the existing line has room before adding capex.

The inputs for this scenario

  • Tons fed per cycle on the bottleneck line: 0.25 tons / cycle (unchanged)
  • Available sort cycles per shift: 480 cycles (unchanged)
  • Sort-line availability: 98 % (raised for this scenario; the documented default is 85)
  • First-pass recovery yield: 92 % (unchanged)

Working through the calculation

  • Applying the documented formula (Gross sort line capacity = tons per cycle x available cycles per shift) to the inputs above produces each figure below.
  • At this operating point the engine returns 108 tons / shift for net sort line capacity (tons/shift), the number this scenario is built around.
  • At this operating point the engine returns 120 tons / shift for gross sort line capacity (tons/shift).
  • At this operating point the engine returns 2.4 tons / shift for availability loss.
  • At this operating point the engine returns 9.41 tons / shift for first-pass yield loss.

How this compares with the baseline

  • Against the tool's baseline example, where sort-line availability sits at 85% and the headline result is 93.84 tons / shift, this scenario comes in 15.29% above the baseline at 108 tons / shift.
  • Use it when sizing a sort line against a tonnage contract, or diagnosing why actual recovery falls short of the rated rate. Treat this as a target state: the delta against the baseline quantifies what the improvement is worth before you commit to chasing it.

Results at a glance

  • Net sort line capacity (tons/shift): 108 tons / shift (headline result)
  • Gross sort line capacity (tons/shift): 120 tons / shift
  • Availability loss: 2.4 tons / shift
  • First-pass yield loss: 9.41 tons / shift

Run it with your numbers

  • Every input above is editable in the live Capacity Gap calculator, which recalculates instantly and can be shared with the inputs intact.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.