PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2016

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 33 PET planet insider Vol. 17 No. 06/16 www.petpla.net CHOOSE THE NUMBER ONE. talk to EREMA! We need more performance! ON the WAY to the K careformance! DISCOVER more AT K2016 Hall 9 / Stand C05 too many risks, while another neces- sitated excessively high temperatures in the decontamination stage. The key criterion for placing the order with Krones was FDA approval, plus the system’s relatively favourable water and energy consumption. Krones was able to offer the PET recycling capa- bility as a complete system, and not just delivering individual parts.” Stage 1: Front end In the facility’s courtyard, the PET bottles from the collection points are delivered in bales. The material is introduced to the front end, which opens them up in a bale-breaker to distribute bottles evenly on the conveyor. The first metal removal is performed using a permanent magnet to remove ferrous metal. The next unit is a ballistic separator, which in two stages removes flat contaminants like foils from the bottles, and lighter ones like dirt, dust and glass, etc. In the de-labeller unit, the containers are now fed between two drums, which mechanically remove labels, which are then separated out and disposed of in skips. A cascade-structured near- infra-red (NIR) sorting station detects coloured PET bottles and foreign plastics, and ejects them. At the end of this cascade, only transparent and light-blue PET bottles are then passed to the downstream process. As part of a dual checking system, the NIR sort- ing stage is followed by a manual sort- ing station. At the grinders, the final station in the front end, the bottles are shredded into small flakes. Now that only a minimised propor- tion of contaminants remains, the downstream washing module can operate more efficiently. “Thanks to dry removal of labels and dry grinding, the washing process has significantly lower water and energy consumption, in fact the water consumption is run- ning at approximately 2.5l/kg of rPET, In the de-labeller unit, the containers are fed between two drums, which mechani- cally remove labels, which are then separated out and disposed of in skips. A cascade-structured near-infra-red (NIR) sorting station detects coloured PET bottles and foreign plastics, and ejects them.