MACHINERY | RECYCLING & GRANULATORS
Agricultural regrowth for films
At last year’s Agricultural Films conference, organised by AMI, Damien Cabaret, business develop- ment manager at Trioplast in France, told delegates about his company’s ‘Trio-Smart’ project to recycle LLDPE agricultural films from one year to the next.
Here, farmers are part of the project, and small tunnel films are
developed according to their needs. Also, they do not ‘buy’ the film – but instead ‘rent’ it according to how much they need. Each year, film is collected, recycled, regranulated and used to make new film. “The film – and granules – remain
the property of Trioplast,” said Cabaret. He said that the market for small tunnels in the Nantes area is around
applications, including films and other products. A wet grinding version is also available. The Germany-based company says all its
granulators are equipped with the ‘double cross’ cutting action. The inclined angle of both the rotor and the bed knives ensures a constant cutting gap across the entire width of the knives, it says.
Below: Neue Herbold’s
SM1000 series has a rotor diameter of 1,000 mm
Performance boost Previous to this, the company re-engineered its ZM 800 pulveriser to further boost performance. One innovation is the stream technique optimi-
sation of the machine housing. In the past, ma- chines of this type were made with a round housing on a platform. The new housing passage now has a curved design. This was done because the material’s angular momentum is used for the dis- charge, as the material is pre-accel- erated for the subsequent air conveying. The redesign allows higher throughput rates to be
generated, while the energy consump-
tion remains unchanged. Beside technical aspects, design and ergonomics were an important part of the
process. The standard machine extensions – such as the vibro-feeder, or mounting bracket for the vacuum feeder – blend into one compact machine concept with clear lines, says the company. Meanwhile, all parts are easily accessible. One modifica- tion includes an optimised door lock, which operates very efficiently and with less space requirements. Cables, connections and sensors are now in a central processing unit. The control unit for water injection, consisting of valves and sensors, is now in an easy accessible, protected housing.
32 FILM & SHEET EXTRUSION | December 2018
2,000 tonnes of LLDPE, equivalent to around €4m.
One challenge was to reduce the
level of dirt – which was as high as 80% – before recycling the film. Also, the initial target for the use of regran- ulates in each new batch of film was 10%, but after four years of testing this was raised to around 90%. �
www.trioplast-agri.fr
Super tangential Conair launched a new family of granulators, the Viper series, at NPE. These range in size from small beside-the-press units to large central granulators. The new Viper portfolio includes 14 models with rotor diameters of 6, 8, 12, 17 and 23 inches (140, 200, 300, 420 and 570 mm), and maximum throughputs from 80 lb/hr (36 kg/hr) to 3,800 lb/hr (1,724 kg/hr). Tangential feed cutting chambers are standard on smaller machines, and the large units come in what Conair calls a ‘super-tangential configuration’ to facilitate feeding of large and bulky scrap. Three-blade open rotors are also standard, and other rotor designs are available. Sam Rajkovich, VP, sales & marketing at Conair,
said: “The design of our new Viper granulators has been totally customer-driven. Our objective was to develop a straightforward, uncomplicated suite of Conair-designed machines, suitable for most applications. We also wanted to make standard as many popular features as possible.” Among these popular features: all but the smallest and largest models are fully sound-insulat- ed on the hopper and the cutting chamber; abrasion-resistant steel, hardened to 550 HV, is used to reduce wear and increase the cutting chamber’s life; water cooling channels are incorpo- rated into machines with 12in (300mm) diameter rotors and larger; larger screens, equal to 50% of the rotor diameter, are used to increase through- put without added horsepower. Benefiting the user, knives are designed to be adjusted in an outside jig on a workbench, rather than inside the cutting chamber, and maintenance and cleaning are made easier thanks to tool-less front access, hinged, tilt-back hoppers (powered on large models), and drop-down screen cradles. The Viper granulators can be configured for feeding of scrap in a wide range of shapes and sizes. The options range from an upturned feed
www.filmandsheet.com
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