The increasing demand for recyclates and the shortage of food-grade PET flakes pose challenges for batch quality and color consistency.

Repi offers various additives for recycling PET, which can be used, for example, to prevent the material from darkening.

16:9

Messe K-Kunststoffmesse

kunststoffe-international.com

kunststoffe.de

Recycling

Umweltmanagement

Kunststoff Werkstoffe

Polyethylenterephthalat

Thermoplaste

Kunststoff-Recycling

Kunststoffverarbeitung: Verfahren

Kunststoff-Aufbereitung

Kunststoff-Rezyklat

Additive

Compensating for Darkening in Recycled PET

New Plastic Heroes: The start-up ForPET worked with industry partners to develop a technology for the production of foamed rPET.

Sergey Nikitenko (in the photo) founded the start-up in 2021 with Mikhail Iakobachvili and Dmitrii Rastorguev. 

ForPET worked with industry partners to develop a technology for the production of foamed rPET.

New Plastic Heroes: ForPET

Start up

Wirtschaft

Unternehmen und Unternehmer

Ehrhardt, Melanie

Verpackungstechnik

Kreislaufwirtschaft

Recycling: Foaming instead  of Dreaming

The new plant will immediately produce an approximate 18,000 tons per year of recycled material from near-household collection.

At the new plant, the joint venture produces recycled PET granulate based on bottles from household waste for the production of new preforms and bottles.

Alpla Starts rPET Production in Romania

German specialist for chemical PET recycling expands capacity by up to 200 t of used plastic bottles per day.

From left to right: Jan van Kisfeld Managing Director), Dr. Vivek Tandon (Founder ) and Benjy Thompson (CEO of the Development Authority of Bulloch County).

Unternehmen

Revalyu Builds Major Facility in the USA

Each year, more than one million tons of plastic waste are generated in Kenya – so far unused. T3 wants to change this and invests in a bottle-to-bottle recycling plant from Starlinger.

Around 1,334,000 tons of plastic become waste in Kenya each year.

Starlinger Installs First Plant in Kenya

At its small-scale PET recycling pilot line in Octeville, France, Sidel will develop its understanding of PET recycling with the aim of giving comprehensive support to the market as it switches to greater use of recycled PET.

Sidel opens a new hub to develop design for recycling primary packaging in Octeville, France.

Sidel Opens Hub to Develop Design for Recycling Primary Packaging

Faerch and Erema realize closed loop for PET food packaging.

Verpackungsmittel aus Kunststoffen

Kunststoffverarbeitung

Verpackungsmaterial

Logistik

Closed the Loop for PET Trays

Strategic partnership delivers best practice example of a closed recycling loop for PET-based multilayer.

Best practice example of a closed recycling loop for PET-based multilayer.

Kunststoffe

Photonik

Optik

Technische Kunststoffe

Closed Recycling Loop for PET-Based Multilayer

Mohinani is bringing PET bottle-to-bottle recycling to West Africa and is buying two Starlinger plants for this purpose.

The recoSTAR PET iV+ recycling lines produce food-grade rPET that can be used up to 100% in PET preform production.

Bottle-to-Bottle-Recycling in Ghana

To close the recycling loop for end-f-life tires, Pyrum will in future produce pyrolysis oil from discarded tires using its own pyrolysis process. BASF will then feed this into its Verbund at the start of production.

End-of-life tires are tires that are no longer suitable or approved for their intended use.

Vom Altreifen zum Türgriff: Pyrum, BASF und Mercedes-Benz schließen Wertstoffkreislauf.

Technik Trend

New Life for Old Tires

As of August 16, 2022, Guenther Klammer is responsible for the research and technical developments of Next Generation Recyclingmaschinen GmbH as the new technical manager (CTO).

Guenther Klammer, new CTO at Next Generation Recyclingmaschinen GmbH.

Guenther Klamm New CTO of NGR

The two companies want to contribute their respective know-how to the value chain in order to return plastic waste that is not recycled mechanically.

Left: Christoph Gahn, Vice President Chemical Recycling Business & Technologies BASF; right: Marco Tomasi Morgano, CTO Arcus

Chemie

Naturwissenschaften

BASF and Arcus Sign Agreement

The Ereman Group’s subsidiaries will be presenting their innovations and customer services for the first time at a combined stand in Düsseldorf.

The new 406 laser filter with 50 % more screen area.

Continuous High-Performance Filter with 50 % More Screen Surface Area

The machine manufacturer will be integrated with Coperion’s recycling product lines into its new Recycling Business Unit that plans to offer complete solutions for plastics recycling processing.

Werner Herbold, CEO, Herbold Meckesheim GmbH (left) and Markus Parzer, President, Polymer Division, Coperion.

Coperion acquires Herbold Meckesheim

VDMA and 13 member companies to present the latest technologies for the circular economy in the plastics industry at K 2022.

Circular Economy Forum at K 2022

Early March saw Tomra open a second testing center at its German headquarters. Located in Mülheim-Kärlich, it will test out various sorting processes for different materials, focusing above all on assessing how effectively plastic waste is sorted.

At the beginning of March, Tomra opened a second testing center at its German head office to conduct thorough testing on a wider range of sorting processes.

Mülheim-Kärlich, Germany, with a population of just under 11,000 is situated in northern Rhineland-Palatinate. Wikipedia informs us that the sights include the Old Chapel in the Town Hall, the Roman Villa, numerous half-timbered houses and an educational fruit trail with over 250 trees and shrubs. But all this seems to have left the close-to 200 visitors who came to Mülheim-Kärlich from February 28 to March 2, 2023 relatively underwhelmed. Instead, their prime focus was on waste sorting Namely, the waste sorting conducted at Tomra. The company opened its second test center at its German head office.

On the first conference day, participants listened to presentations detailing the company’s strategic direction. The second day focused on the extension of the test facilities. “Ever-stricter legal regulations and higher recycling targets have seen the demand for recovering valuable materials from waste skyrocket, triggering an upsurge in demand for our sorting solutions and material tests. We‘ve been monitoring this trend over the past few years and have seen the testing capacity in Germany gradually reach its limits,” said Fabrizio Radice, VP and Head of Global Sales and Marketing at Tomra Recycling Sorting.

Previously, the company housed all of its waste and metal sorting machines in a single building. Now, with the new facility up and running, Tomra has a total of eight testing facilities at seven global locations, providing recyclers and plant operators alike with the chance to test their materials on sorting machines before making an investment. „We are constantly developing new sorting systems, all of which are installed in our testing center. As well as handling the growing demand for testing, we have rolled out several new products to the market over the past few years and plan to launch more in future. To ensure that we can accommodate our expanding portfolio, we have decided to invest in an additional building,“ adds Radice. Until recently, the company conducted around 500 to 600 customer and internal tests each year, and expects demand to continue rising in future.

While the facility already in place tests the waste sorting process, the new facility is solely focused on metal sorting. During the official opening, the industry partners, customers, and media representatives in attendance had the chance to witness a range of demo lines in action, including two for sorting polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging waste.

High Levels of Purity Achieved in Flake Sorting

One of the demo lines was dedicated to smart flake sorting, which according to Tomra, is becoming increasingly important. Context: Most plastic production comprises polyolefins and the packaging industry. As recycling quotas become increasingly stringent and the gap between supply and demand widens still further, recycling, and therefore color sorting of polyolefins, is becoming increasingly important. Sorting flakes accurately is key to achieving high-quality recycled materials, alongside washing as well as being a crucial benchmark to determine recyclate quality.

This was amply demonstrated at Mülheim-Kärlich, as PET flakes were sorted. However, before reaching this point, the original products involved, e.g. PET bottles, undergo several steps. Only after pre-sorting, removal of impurities based on color and material type, and subsequent washing process, are the bottles then crushed into flakes.

However, the resulting flakes still contain high levels of other plastics, such as polypropylene from bottle caps, polyvinyl chloride from label remnants, metal particles and other impurities. Consequently, the flakes undergo an intensive cleaning process involving various combinations of metal separators, sieves, air separators, and several steps of hot and cold washing (rinsing and drying). The individual processing steps help minimize impurities as far as possible.

No matter how fractional the impurities or color variations, they still have an adverse impact on the recycled material quality. Accordingly, the goal is to produce PET granules with quality identical to virgin material, by eliminating contaminants. Highly advanced sensor-based technology allows the flakes to be cleaned and any residual contamination removed, achieving purity levels of up to 99 %. The resulting PET granules are perfect for producing new beverage bottles.

An Integrated Approach Saving Time and Money

For Tomra, achieving high levels of purity in recycled materials is contingent on having an integrated approach, in other words, a system combining pre-sorting and flake sorting. The former process allows bottles to be separated, not only from other plastic types but also by the color of the material. Precise pre-sorting is an important step, since it reduces most color and material impurities. When the bottles are crushed and transformed into flakes, the remaining impurities can be easily detected and sorted using highly sensitive sensors. Deploying integrated systems to pre-sort plastics before flake sorting paves the way to fine-tune the sorting performance to match the quality of the input material and impurities. This enables high levels of purity to be achieved while simultaneously boosting overall efficiency.

Plant operators can look forward to numerous improvements – both operationally and financially. Pre-sorting materials efficiently helps ease the need for manual sorting, since sorting technology can remove most contaminants. And this, in turn, allows a reduction in operating costs, or provides scope to allocate personnel resources elsewhere.

Notable Success when Recycling  PET Trays

The second demo for plastic packaging demonstrated scope to separate PET bottles and PET trays. While PET bottles are a prime example of a closed loop system, there remains room for improvement when it comes to PET trays. Although they are also recycled, the quantities are very small. Moreover, instead of creating new trays, they are normally used instead to produce textiles fibers, which is far from a real circular economy.

Progress with the recycling of PET shells depends on all the players in the value chain getting on board: Processors should be sparing with foreign materials in and on the shell to ensure the material remains as recyclable as possible. The recycling companies must remember to selectively sort the trays and the material PET trays from the outset when washing and processing the material.

TOMRA Sorting GmbH  

https://www.tomra.com

Ausgabenartikel

Also at the beginning of March, Tomra opened a second testing center at its German head office to conduct thorough testing on a wider range of sorting processes.

Fabrizio Radice: “Stricter legal regulations and higher recycling targets have seen the demand to recover valuable materials from waste soar to a record high.“

View of a demolition line: in Mülheim-Kärlich, Tomra has all the equipment as well as sets of machinery on site and can thus adapt the setting individually.

Opening of the test center (left to right): Volker Rehrmann (EVP and Head of Tomra Recycling), Fabrizio Radice (VP and Head of Global Sales and Marketing), Tove Andersen (CEO), Tom Eng (SVP and Head of Tomra Recycling Sorting), André Lehmann (Test Center Manager).

Tomra - me

PET Recycling: Testing Out the Circular Economy 

Read the German version of the article in our magazine Kunststoffe or at <a href="https://www.kunststoffe.de/a/fachartikel/branchentreffen-der-packaging-industrie-3533989" target="_blank">www.kunststoffe.de</a>

issue 04/2023

issue 03/2023

issue 02/2023

About the journal

About the Journal

Contact

Media Data

Subscriptions

Subscription Offers

Subscription Cancellation

My Login

Imprint

Terms & Conditions

Terms and Conditions

Privacy Policy

News

Mobility

Packaging

Medical

Electrical/Electronics

Plastics Recycling

Lightweight Construction

Applications

Standard Thermoplastics

Engineering Plastics

High-Performance Plastics

Elastomers

Thermosets

Additives/Masterbatches

Bioplastics

Composites

Materials

Injection Molding

Extrusion

Additive Manufacturing

Further Processing Methods

Compounding

Composite Processing

Peripheral Equipment

Simulation

Processing

Research & Development

Dissertations

Patents

Journal of Plastics Technology

HANSER

Career at HANSER

Publisher

FORM+Werkzeug

HANSER automotive

QZ Qualität und Zuverlässigkeit

WB Werkstatt + Betrieb

More Technical Portals

Publisher/Career

E-Paper

Subscription

Newsletter

Deutsch

Service Menu

linkedin

Products

Partners & Associations

Organ

Business Directory

Online Archive

Multi-User License

FACHARTIKEL_2023, FACHARTIKEL_2022, FACHARTIKEL_2021, FACHARTIKEL_2020, FACHARTIKEL_2019, FACHARTIKEL_2018, INTERVIEWARTIKEL_2023, INTERVIEWARTIKEL_2022, INTERVIEWARTIKEL_2021, INTERVIEWARTIKEL_2020, INTERVIEWARTIKEL_2019

You want to read more? To continue reading this content please log in or register for the Hanser Customer Center.

Please log in

Choose Single Copy

Choose E-Paper

To Online Achives

You want to read more? Please choose your favourite from the following offers!

Settings

You want to read a Plus Article? No problem - you can purchase these articles separately (including PDF download).

KUint_Einzelartikel-Download-600x399px

Shopkunden

Kunststoffe international Single Article

Hanser

7% Digital mit Auslandssteuer

Try the digital subscription of Kunststoffe international 4 weeks free of charge!
The digital subscription includes:
<ul>
<li>E-Paper: The digital edition of Kunststoffe international</li>
<li>Kunststoffe-international.com and kunststoffe.de: Unlimited access to all contents</li>
<li>Online archive: Exclusive access to articles from back issues</li>
</ul>
If you want to continue the Kunststoffe international digital subscription after the free trial period, you don't need to do anything else. The annual digital subscription at the <a href="https://www.hanser-kundencenter.de/en/hanser/productfinder/Kunststoffe-international-Digital-Annual-Subscription" target="_blank">subscription price</a> valid at this time will start automatically. If you do not wish to continue reading after the trial period, please write to <a href="mailto:kundencenter@hanser.de" target="_blank">kundencenter@hanser.de</a> at the latest one week prior to the end of the trial period.

KUint_Digital_Abo_Gratis_1280x851

Kunststoffe international Digital Trial Subscription

9 E-Paper editions
Access to the current E-Paper edition will be provided immediately after submitting your order.
<ul>
<li>Digital: E-Paper are optimized for tablets, smartphones and browsers.</li>
<li>Comfortable: As soon as a new edition is available, you will receive an alert.</li>
<li>Minimum term: 12 months</li>
<li>Callable until at least six weeks prior to the end of the minimum term.</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://www.kunststoffe.de/en/epaper" target="_blank">&gt;&nbsp;Detailed information on the E-Paper </a>
<a href="https://epaper.kunststoffe.de/en?autologin=true" target="_blank">&gt; Take a look at the current E-Paper issue</a>