PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2018

MATERIALS / RECYCLING PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 06/18 www.petpla.net 11 Production without pre-drying or crystallisation with MRS technology of Gneuss installed in Dubai PET strapping tapes made of bottle flakes Consent Plastic produces his own flakes out of collected PET bottles and uses these flakes to manufacture polyester strapping tapes with a high tensile strength. These tapes are sold also to countries beyond the Middle East. A wide range of high-quality polyester tapes are offered under the trademark PET Band. In the course of further capac- ity expansion, the Arabian company purchased a new production line for the manufacture of PET strapping tapes made of 100% non-dried post- consumer bottle flakes. Further, the line can process shredded preforms and shredded straps or a mixture out of these materials. It was the avoidance of the time and energy intensive drying and crystallisation of the PET flakes which convinced Consent Plastic of the Gneuss MRS extruder. Compared to Consent’s previous production line including a single-screw extruder, crystallisation and drying processing steps, the footprint of the line could be reduced by 12% and the energy requirement by 20-25%. Further, the strapping tape pro- duced with the MRS extrusion line is of much better quality in terms of tensile strength, stretch and splitting. This is a result of the intensive mixing effect of the MRS in the degassing section and the high degassing effi- ciency. Further, there is no need for work-intensive maintenance of the drying and/or crystallisation system, which was necessary with consent’s previous line, so that the resulting machine downtimes are avoided, too. The line reacts to a significant extent automatically to quality fluctuations in the input material without causing production interruptions. “Here in Dubai, we operate the world’s first and only line for the production of PET tapes made of bottle flakes without a complicated pre-drying or crystallisation process”, explains Maheshwar Akkala, the Divi- sion Manager-Plastic Products at Consent. “This has already got around in this sector. Some of our competi- tors have already asked us about this technology.” The throughput rate of the new Consent line amounts to maxi- mum 700kg/h, the vacuum of the installed water ring pump is around 25mbar. The pres- sure-constant and process-constant rotary filtration system uses filtra- tion finenesses of down to 56μm, to make sure that all foreign particles are removed which could cause break- ing points later on during stretching. The die group consists of 4 pumps, which can produce a total of 8 straps with a dimension of 9.5 x 0.6 up to 32 x 1mm. The stretch- ing ratio is around 1 to 8, the haul-off speed can be up to 160m/min. An embossing unit or a wax adding unit, as required, is used for manual or automatic packing. Further, an accumulator compensates the reduced haul-off speed when rolls are changed. Maheshwar Akkala states: “We have been in a position to improve our product qualities even more and reduce our costs with this new strap- ping tape line based on the Gneuss MRS Extrusion System.” www.gneuss.de RECYCLING S P E C I A L Maheshwar Akkala in front of his new line; Consent Plastic is a leading producer of strapping tapes and PET flakes in the Middle East.