WEEE RECYCLING | INNOVATION
technology at its plants in Belgium and Nether- lands to improve separation of metals, ABS and PS. In June, it held a small ceremony at its Waalwijk site, Netherlands, following a €0.5m investment in an electrostatic separator. This will process about 6,000 tpa of mixed discarded electrical appliances which will be converted into ABS and HIPS plastic flakes with a purity of at least 98%. “With this new investment Coolrec positions
itself as one of the most sustainable WEEE recy- clers in Europe,” says Dieter Avonds, Managing Director of Coolrec. “We continue to improve our secondary raw materials production process and make material that can scarcely be distinguished from new. Our ability to produce secondary raw materials with a purity of 98% shows the plastics industry that the conditions are there for making plastic products still more circular.” Coolrec, a subsidiary of Renewi, says it con- structed the machine in two phases. The first consists of a large impurity separator to remove mixed waste streams such as paper, wood fibres or pieces of rubber from the plastic streams to be purified. The second process sorts plastic by type on the basis of the electromagnetic load, to enable production of 98% purity ABS and HIPS flakes. The company says this “makes the secondary granules almost as good as primary raw materials, and puts Coolrec in a position to improve the sorting, processing and creation of high-value recycled materials still further”. US WEEE recycler Universal Recycling Tech- nologies (URT) has also invested in a new plastics separation system at its headquarters in Janesville, Wisconsin. The system has the capacity to process
6,000 lbs of WEEE plastics per hour, while recover- ing 100% of all metal contaminants from the plastic stream. It is designed to separate targeted plastics in multiple sink-float tanks by processing the material in a fluid of intermediate density. The plastics recovered in the process include PS, ABS, PP and PE. URT says it began researching and investigating the potential of adding a plastics separation system to its metal recycling business three years ago. In 2019, URT built a prototype system that tested the design process and product valuation. “We saw an opportunity in the market and wanted to provide a stable and domestic e-waste plastic solution for our customers,” says Jim Cornwell, URT’s President. The company says recovery of plastics has become important for WEEE recyclers due to changes in plastic export requirements following amendments to the Basel Treaty. Jeff Gloyd, URT’s Vice President of Sales, says the system “allows URT to own our destiny related to plastics recycling. This
Above: Coolrec has made
investments in separation technology at its plants in Belgium and Netherlands
ERF 1000
ETTLINGER continuous melt filters have been processing contaminated polyolefines, poly- styrenes, PET and PA since 2004. Now, with the ERF 1000 you can achieve up to 10 t/hr of e.g. polyolefines with the lowest melt loss in the industry. With rigid-screen, continuous filtration options down to 60 micron, ETTLINGER ERF is the new standard in melt filtration.
IMAGE: COOLREC
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