WASHING | TECHNOLOGY
caused problems and high management costs to landfills and incinerators. With this new plant, a fraction of material usually not recovered will be transferred to the Ecoplasteam facility to become Ecoallene after treatment. The input material, in the form of commingled
bales, comes from a paper mill after undergoing a process for Tetra Pak cellulose recovery. The material is processed and treated through progres- sive phases and washed with a series of equipment in order to reduce the presence of paper fibres. Once the material is clean, it is mixed by a gravi- metric dosing system, filtrated, granulated by the extrusion line and put into big bags. Ecoallene can be extruded or injection moulded like a standard polymer. It can be coloured and mixed with additives for different applications. AMUT has also worked with Indorama Ventures
North America on a food-grade recycled PET facility. “We have been working with AMUT for a number of years to develop an excellent techno- logical and yet economical solution to meet our high standards for r-PET flakes,” says Yash Awasthi, Vice President of Indorama Ventures North Ameri- can Operations. “The new plant will process more than 100 million pounds (45.4m kg) of plastic bottles annually into clean PET flakes to produce our FuTuRe-PET. The AMUT washing section is capable of reaching 4,000 kg/h. The processed bottles are extremely dirty, being post-consumer landfill collected. These are the dirtiest bottles seen in this market and AMUT technology is able to obtain the premier value clean PET flakes from them. The cleaned PET flakes will be used to produce new resins for a variety of sustainable products which our clients now demand for their PET packaging products. Our goal is to close the loop on recycling and increase the sustainability of the PET containers.”
The new Indorama Ventures recycling facility will
be located in Guadalajara, Mexico, at its Ecomex joint venture in close proximity to its resin produc- tion site. The new recycling plant will be operation- al in late 2019. AMUT will also upgrade an existing unit at the ECOMEX plant as well, making the factory capable of producing over 13,000 pounds per hour of highest quality PET flakes from post- consumer PET bottles coming from landfill. The new washing plant has been specifically developed by AMUT to cope with the necessity of processing very dirty PET post-consumer landfill collected bottles. These bottles require a wet-cold- cleaning technology incorporated in the de-label- ler unit. The de-labeller removes the labels, especially the full body shrink sleeves, to improve bottle quality to go through the subsequent cleaning operations. Turbo and friction washer machines perform the cleaning phase. In this case, the combined action of these two machines needs boosting – the friction force has been increased to remove not only fine pollutants, labels and glue but even soil. Pre-washing and de-labelling phases are carried out in a cold water process while the turbo and friction washer have hot water flow. The bottles are always subject to a high level of cleaning and pollutants are removed inside each machine as they undergo non-destructive high friction with a suitable residence time. AMUT adds that its technology optimises
operational costs. Fresh water usage is reduced to a minimum because the water, that is continuously filtrated, can be re-used during the whole process and the consumption of energy and cleaning agents is minimised.
CLICK ON THE LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION: �
www.krones.com �
www.herbold.com �
www.hydrodyn.de �
www.amutgroup.com
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com July/August 2019 | PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD 29
Above: A turbo washer is part of the technol- ogy solution for POAL recycling
developed by AMUT
Left: AMUT has worked with Indorama Ventures North America on a food-grade recycled PET facility
PHOTO: AMUT
PHOTO: AMUT
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