PETpla.net Insider 01+02 / 2018

MATERIALS / RECYCLING PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 01+02/18 www.petpla.net 10 Amut Group and CarbonLite working together to improve bottle recycling A new recycling plant for Dallas The new CarbonLite recycling facility, located in Dallas, Texas, USA started operations in September 2017, as per the schedule. The washing line supplied by Amut has state of art of technology and is the second plant of this size in operation in the USA, capable of pro- ducing over 12,000 pounds per hour of high-quality PET from MRF post-consumer bales. This 250,000ft 2 bottle-to-bottle PET recycling plant processes more than 100 million pounds plastic bot- tles annually and the Amut washing section is capable of reaching 6t/h and permits the transformation of old plastic bottles into PET resins, flakes and pellets that can then be used to produce new beverage bot- tles and other sustainable products. Thus, the Dallas facility will double the company’s annual capacity of foodgrade PET. “We are glad to have scored another top reference in the North- ern America plastic recycling market. The CarbonLite PET recycling pro- ject comes after the two mega PET recycling plants that Amut supplied in North America to Unifi in Reids- ville, North Carolina, and to Pet- star Coca-Cola Mexico” stated Mr. Piergianni Milani, the President of Amut Group. According to Mr. Leon Farhanick, President of CarbonLite, the company is very satisfied with the quality, punc- tuality and technology provided by the Amut technology. Anthony Georges, President of Amut North America, stated: “CarbonLite management has over a decade of experience in PET wash lines and selected the Amut solution to face the new challenges in the market conditions for their Dallas operations. Considering that Amut is one of the major OEM supplier for their system, we integrated our De-Labeller, Amut’s patent technol- ogy, and as well the wet whole bottle pre-wash.” Awarded De-Labeller The Amut De-Labeller won the prestigious Plastic Recycling Innova- tion Award from the APR (Association of Plastic Recyclers) in 2017. Georges states: “When you are dealing with co- mingled MRF bottle bales you need to be able to detect and remove all non- PET and colour PET containers prior to entering the final washing process. By utilising our double stage we perform with the first De-Labeller the dry-clean- ing action able to detach most of the shrink sleeve labels, while the second unit is a wet De-Labeller process to pre-wash the whole bottles and reduce wear effect on grinders blades. This wet bottle washing technology utilises the filtered recycled flake washing water therefore it does not increase the consumption of fresh water used in the complete cleaning process, and contributes to the elimination of outside dirt as well as remaining labels on the whole bottles”. Critical to the Amut technology is that the bottles stay intact through these two machines and are not dam- aged during the actions of De-Labeller therefore improving efficiency and the functionality of the following automatic sorting equipment so that the non- PET and colour PET can be easier removed from the clear PET bottle stream. The clear PET bottles will be washed directly in the Amut wash flake system. Amut scope of machinery & tech- nology supplied includes as well, the wet grinding system to turn bottles into flakes, along with two of the Amut patented Flake Friction Washers, and two of their newest advance technol- ogy ‘Sink-Float’ separation machines, which are able to capture the polyole- fin caps so that these cleaned caps can also be valued. The whole process is engineered to increase the grade quality of the clear PET flakes which comply with the most demanding bottle-to-bottle applications, optimising the value of every bale, while minimising opera- tional costs, fresh water usage, energy and cleaning agents. www.amutgroup.com