TPH (TPH)

TPH stands for tonnes per hour, the standard industry unit for expressing the instantaneous throughput rate of recycling equipment or processing lines. TPH measures the mass of feed material that an operation can process per hour under steady-state conditions, and serves as the principal capacity specification in equipment tenders, plant design, and regulatory consent documents.

Indian recycling-sector calibration points: A small Indian e-waste plant typically operates at 0.5-1 TPH primary shredding capacity, processing 3,500-7,000 tonnes per year on a single 8-hour shift across 300 operating days. A mid-scale plant runs at 2-5 TPH, processing 15,000-35,000 TPA on one or two shifts. Large industrial e-waste or scrap-metal facilities run at 10+ TPH with continuous three-shift operation, processing 70,000-200,000+ TPA. Tyre pyrolysis plants are typically sized in TPD (tonnes per day) rather than TPH because of batch cycle considerations — a 'small' tyre pyrolysis plant at 10 TPD corresponds to roughly 0.4 TPH average, while a large continuous unit at 100 TPD averages 4.2 TPH.

Calculation and how to interpret a TPH specification: A 1 TPH plant can theoretically process 1,000 kg per hour, or 8,000 kg in an 8-hour shift, or 2,40,000 kg (240 tonnes) in a 30-day month of single-shift operation. However, real-world throughput is reduced by uptime factors — equipment maintenance, blade changes, feed-material variability, downstream-bottleneck waiting time. Typical achievable annual throughput is 60-75% of theoretical TPH multiplied by hours-of-operation: a 1 TPH plant running 2,400 hours per year achieves 1,800-2,400 TPA actual processed material.

Implications for plant design and tender specification: When specifying recycling equipment, TPH should always be paired with feed-material definition (bulk density, fragment size, contamination level) and product-size specification (output 80% passing 25 mm, or 80% passing 100 mm) because the same shredder can deliver dramatically different TPH on different feeds. A shredder rated 5 TPH on whole washing machines may deliver only 2 TPH on dense electric-motor scrap. Vendor performance guarantees should specify TPH on a defined reference feed, with an acceptance test conducted using that feed during commissioning. Failure mode: accepting TPH ratings without feed-material definition routinely produces 30-50% throughput shortfalls in operation, with no contractual recourse against the supplier.