Equipment industry veteran announces retirement

William Guptail, a 46-year employee of General Kinematics Corp. (GK), Crystal Lake, Ill., has officially announced his retirement.

William Guptail

Guptail, who spent much of his career focusing on the scrap and C&D recycling sectors, was inducted into Construction & Demolition Recycling Association's (CDRA's ) C&D Recycling Hall of Fame in 2013.

According to GK, Guptail started his involvement in the recycling industry in the early 1980s. “His involvement in construction and demolition [recycling] was an outgrowth of his work in the waste-to-energy industry, where companies were looking for opportunities to recover various commodities from the construction and demolition waste stream,” the company states in a news release.

Guptail started his career with GK as an engineer, but his “innate mechanical curiosity, hands-on approach and amiable personality helped him to move along to positions of sales engineer, industry sales manager and his most recent position of director of recycling,” says GK.

Guptail pioneered and patented several innovations into C&D sorting systems, according to GK, including:

• The primary Finger-ScreenTM for size separation designed to provide recovery rates of from 40 to 60 percent;
• The secondary B-line for fines, which could improve recovery rates to beyond 70 percent;
• The vibratory Destoner® for density separation, designed to bring recovery rates beyond 80 percent;
• Modified internal design changes of the Destoner® for enhanced separation; and
• Near Zero Dust Control using recirculating air to minimize dust emissions.
   

Much of Guptail’s other work and research focused on mechanical sorting techniques for use in downstream automobile shredding applications.

“The General Kinematics core philosophy of combining innovative technologies with production process insight and creativity to deliver the highest quality equipment and solutions in the industry is demonstrated by Bill’s career and commitment to seek improvements through design changes in more than 50 C&D sorting facilities across the United States, Canada and Europe,” says GK.

General Kinematics manufactures vibratory equipment for the processing of bulk materials for the foundry, mining and bulk processing industries.