PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2011

PET products 38 PET planet insider Vol. 12 No. 03/11 www.petpla.net Post-consumer PET recycling Italian com- pany Piovan manufactures and markets a line of auxil- iary machines for production of flat sheet for thermoforming, profiles, fibres, hoses and wires and dedicated systems for the production of flexible films, both blown and cast. It has been addressing the particular issues associ- ated with systems using post-consumer PET (PCR PET) flakes as the main raw material in the production of PET fibres for car interiors. PCR PET is amorphous, dusty and comes in flakes with variable granulometry, so that a spe- cific treatment is needed in order to provide the mechanical properties required for optimal material processing in the extrusion line. Piovan has developed a solution with a crys- tallising, dehumidifying and dosing system with a capacity of up to 1,200kg/h PCR PET flakes and up to 1,600kg/h PET granules. Such large capacities are not conducive to easy changeovers or small production batches. In order to avoid material waste and long machine down-times, the company has developed a double dosing process and two separate parallel columns for crystallisation and drying, which allows the user to switch from PCR PET flakes to PET granules and to vary the percentage of the recycled material to a large concentration of PCR flakes, without affecting the system’s overall efficiency. Patented gas chambers heat up process air for the crystallising and drying systems. The entire production process can be managed via SVS, the company’s supervision software, from a remote PC workstation. Simple selection operations enable produc- tion to automatically adapt to different types of materials, depending on densities and capacities, with the intention of optimising energy usage and minimising waste. Piovan is developing its range of products specifically designed for the extrusion sector, including dryers, dosers, feeding and conveying systems, crystallisers, granulators and recovery solutions. It also develops customised systems in collabora- tion with OEM and extruder manufacturers. www.piovan.com Pre-reduction label remover from Herbold New designs for bottles and labels, including novel shapes and all-over sleeves, complicate the task of bottle recyclers, according to Herbold Meckesheim GmbH. Labels covering the whole surface of the bottle, for example, are an obstacle to optic sorting. If the labels are made of PVC then maintaining the expected quality standard with conventional technology cannot be guaranteed. Herbold claims to have overcome these problems with a new machine that uses fric- tion to provide a preliminary treatment of the bottles before size reduction. The company says that the machine removes labels without unwanted side-effects, such as bottle-head breakage. Paper labels are removed and separated in a dry process, allowing easier separation of remaining paper fibres. The company says that all-over, shrink-fit labels can be almost completely removed and separated, which helps to prevent erroneous NIR identification during sorting. The pre-treatment machine’s technology is also said to enable removal and separation of bottle caps and silicone sealants. The process removes sand and foreign bodies at the same time as the label, which should help to increase the lifetime of cutting knives. www.herbold.com Piovan crystallising system Erratum! In the last issue of Petplanet we printed an unedited arti- cle on Messrs. PET Verpackungen Deutschland by mistake. Please see below the corrected version. We apologise for this error Preforms and new bottle designs to the fore The PET-Verpackungen Germany offers standard pre- forms with 28mm PCO 1810 neck finish and a range of new solutions in weight-reduced neck areas. The company also supplies a variety of new preforms PCO 1881 standard, as well as 38mm 2- and 3-start neck finishes. Furthermore, the company offers multilayer preforms with tailor-made barrier solutions, designed for sensitive-fill goods. PET Verpackun- gen are also producing PET bottles with capacities ranging from 20ml to 5l on five single-stage and two two-stage instal- lations. Possible applications range from water, CSD and spirits as well as applications in the cosmetics and deter- gents sector right through to foodstuff applications. One new in-house development is a wide mouth jar for powdered milk/ coffee creamer. In the health and beauty care packaging sector PET Verpackungen has come up with a bottle family for hand sanitizer. A further new development that the people at PET Verpackungen have developed on their own initiative is a small 0.2l champagne ‘piccolo’ bottle. www.pet-verpackungen.de ALS compressed air-free automatic guide system Sidel’s ALS guide for air conveyors is an automatic adjustment system for side guides. It is designed to pro- vide increased flexibility during format changeovers. It has no pneumatic cylinder, which is intended to enable it to automatically adapt to the majority of bottles currently on the market, on a single conveyor. The operator selects the desired format from the control panel, a gearbox transmits the appropriate movement to the side guides through a flex- ible shaft that follows the conveyor layout, and the guides are positioned by translation thanks to a worm gear. The system does not use compressed air, has a small number of parts and requires only one drive up to 30m per side. www.sidel.com