The five pillars of plastics recycling – Herbold Hall 09 Booth B42
The machine and plant manufacturer from Meckesheim/Germany Herbold will present their five pillars for an efficient and cost-effective recycling of plastic waste. In the first pillar, the company identifies solutions for pre-size-reduction if the feeding material is too bulky for the usual procedure or if the material is in a first step only to be coarsely shredded for a subsequent sorting, classification or inspection.
Size reduction is said to be the second pillar. In Herbold’s patented granulators with forced feeding of the SB type the material is not fed into the grinding chamber by gravity but as a continuous and even flow by means of feeding screws.
Pillar 3 is assigned to fine grinding. Herbold impact disc pulverisers are high-speed fine grinders (pulverising below 1mm), used with granular and brittle materials.
In pillar 4, washing, separating and drying, end of life post-industrial and post-consumer plastic products are used, mixed and contaminated plastics. Before they can be used again, they have to be washed and/or separated. With the commissioning of the film washing line at Rodepa Plastics B.V. Herbold Meckesheim proved that a high-quality end product can be obtained by separating undesirable plastics with the hydrocyclone separation step.
The fifth pillar refers to agglomerating/densifying. With extreme materials such as stretch film or foams, a sufficient mechanical or thermal drying is not possible without high energy consumption. As a solution, Herbold presents its Plastcompactor compacting machine. The friction originating between the compacting discs of the compactor heats, dries and compacts the material at the same time. The recycling of PET bottles has a double advantage: the material is being crystallised at the same time. The end product is said to be agglomerated material with good flow properties and a high bulk density, ideal for dosing and mixing.
Photo: Herbold Plastcompactor HV 70 Series (exhibited will be the HV with new feeding device)
