PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2015

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 11 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 10/15 www.petpla.net F.l.t.r.: Lori Carson, Director Commercial Operations and L. Robert Deardurff, President Premium Sponsor Sponsors NLP resin: Used in the manufacture of bottles for non-food liquids, sham- poos, hand soaps, etc. Also used in applications such as appliance com- pounding, fibre etc. Optimum colour and economical in use. Typical usage levels 35-50%. LNO resins: P resin - Direct food contact FDA conditions of use B-H and Health Canada up to 100%, high IV based on process but impact on colour, finest level of melt filtering. Typical usage levels 10-25% because of colour. C resin: Direct food contact FDA con- ditions of use A-J, Health Canada, and EFSA all up to 100%. Pellet is formed by compaction in order to achieve excellent colour and low Acetaldehyde levels (>1ppm). Typical usage levels 25-50%, but has been used at 100%. Powder resin: Direct food contact FDA conditions of use A-J, Health Canada and EFSA approvals up to 100%. Typical use levels >50% in applications that include colourants, coatings, films. Excellent colour, economical in use. W resin - Direct food contact FDA conditions of use E-G up to 100%. Designed with IV to match water bottle resins. Good colour and economical in use, typical usage levels 35-100%. traditional process (batch operation), and the other one continuous. The continuous operation is a patented development in collaboration with Plastic Technologies Inc. (PTI), which holds shares in Phoenix Technologies. According to L. Robert Deardurff, the process is unique and reduces pro- cess stages, energy usage and space requirements considerably by com- parison to batch operation. Both processes begin with trans- parent post-consumer flakes with a flake size of 10mm (purchased in the USA). In the continuous process the flakes are ground to powder and heat treated in an air stream at a tempera- ture of approx. 200°C with a dwell time of 30 minutes. The powder format means that the most contaminants are burnt up, leaving behind PET powder in FDA specification. In this connection is only a small melt stage. As L. Robert Deardurff goes on to explain, this pro- cess is so gentle that the output level IV is maintained and no further AA content is generated, so no increase in IV is necessary. At the end of the line the powder is mechanically transferred into pellets that have a crispy structure, more precise details about this level remain confidential. This line has a capacity of 10,000 t/a. In the second hall the 10mm post-consumer flakes are ground to a size of 4mm. An increase in IV then takes place in high vacuum decon- tamination batch operations. Finally, the PET flakes go through a crystal- lisator stage which takes them into an extrusion line with a melt filter for decontamination and with the addition of additives to improve transparency. At the end rPET pellets exit the plant, likewise to FDA specification. For the non-food applications the stage IV increase at high vacuum is skipped. A total of four extrusion lines are avail- able. Market situation “The American market has a few problems when it comes to recycling PET material,” says Lori Carson. As a result of the sustained low price of virgin raw materials, the price for recy- cled PET in bottle to bottle quality is slightly above that for virgin PET. She went on: “The reasons for this lie in how the Americans go about handling their domestic waste. Only 10 fed- eral states in the United States have introduced a deposit system for PET drinks bottles and approaches to the way it is handled still vary.” PET bottles in the rest of the USA are consigned to domestic waste and need to be sorted, an operation which is expen- sive and time consuming. This means that the post-consumer PET material that is compressed to form bales in collecting stations is expensive. The quality requirements applicable to the baling of material are also constantly rising and contribute nothing towards reducing costs, even where relatively high volumes are involved. In Califor- nia packaging manufacturers have to prove that their packaging is sustain- able, i.e. among other things it needs to be weight optimised and capable of being recycled. But at the moment this mostly applies to non-food applica- tions. “As far as we are concerned, it is important that we supply an appli- cation-based product design that pre- cisely meets the requirements of our customers,” summarised Lori Carson. As Lori Carson puts it, “we have already been living with the market fluctuations for 23 years. Our strat- egy has always been to maintain a high level of quality and consistency through on-going process optimisation, this is something our customers appre- ciate. We see a growth in bottle-to-bot- tle applications in the American market; the use by packaging manufacturers of recycled PET sends out a message of environmental awareness.” www.phoenixtechnologies.net