PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2015

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 22 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 03/15 www.petpla.net Key function High-performance filtration The trend in plastics recycling of being able to produce even higher quality end products is relentless. The amount of processed plastic waste is growing all the time and there are signs of an additional challenge, especially in the post- consumer field: innovations continually reduce the portion of plastics in packaging while the impurities present in the recycling process are increasing proportionately. In order to be able to achieve consistent quality results nevertheless, high-performance filtration is emerging more and more as a key function in plastic recycling systems. Erema’s melt fil- ters offer efficiency solution. There is no overlooking the trend towards high-performance filtration systems. Recyclers around the world are showing ever increasing interest and the number of new investments and retrofits is soaring. Increasing impurities are not always attributable to the likewise increasing quantities of the processed plastic waste; con- tinuous advancements – such as in packaging materials in the food sector (bottle lightweighting) – are also a factor. Bottles are produced with ever thinner walls to reduce the weight of the end products and thus protect resources. By comparison, however, the absolute amount of impurities such as labels, lids, can parts and metal parts from spray bottles remains the same. It is a fact that the rela- tive/percentage portions of plastic in the waste material is falling and the level of impurities is rising. To meet the requirements for the production of these further developed plastics in recycling, however, the quality of the pellets has to rise even further for the plastic recycling loop to close again. Ultraclean results Erema high-performance filter systems have proven their worth over a number of years in an extremely wide variety of applications. While the recently modified Laserfilter system delivers high quality in film produc- tion with a filtrated impurity level of up to 5%, the SW RTF melt filter sys- tems with partial-surface backflushing ensure clean results with a filtered impurity level of up to 0.2%. Eremas Business Development Manager Christoph Wöss explains in short the highly efficient Erema melt filters: Christoph Wöss, Erema Business Development Manager Appilication Bottle Erema SW 12/170 RTF melt filter with six carrier pistons (12 screen) for heavily contaminated polymers