Technology | sorting
Mind specialises in the production of PET flakes and polypropylene granulate. With more than 20 years of experience in the recycling industry Green Mind supplies its products to bottle makers, foil producers, and producers of fibres and polyester filaments. The company has about 200 employees and has a plant capacity of 10,000 kg/h and 72,000 tpa. The company organises the
collection of plastic bottles through its own national network of collection centres. Pressed into bales the plastic bottles arrive at the Green Mind plant, where they are first singularised and then the labels removed. After pre-washing, the plastic bottles are then separated into unmixed fractions and subjected to Sesotec’s Varisort multi-sensor sorting systems. These systems are equipped with sensors for colour and shape detection, as well as differentiation of plastic types. Shredding of sorted PET bottles
is followed by washing, drying and screening processes. The PET flakes undergo fine sorting with the help of Sesotec Flake Purifier sorting systems. The Flake Purifier systems at this stage separate coloured flakes, metals, and foreign plastic parts from the transparent PET flakes.
Laser spectroscopy Unisensor has developed the Powersort 360 that separates different types of plastic – regardless of their colour – with a high throughput of up to 10 t/h. The company says that the main application is the process- ing of shredder fractions with a high percentage of black plastics. Black and dark plastics place the highest demands on plastic separation. They are commonly found in electronic waste and in the automo- tive industry and can push conventional technologies to their limits. For profitable recycling a separation into the different plastic types is crucial. According to Unisensor, the Powersort 360 is a
flexible sorting system for all types of plastic with grain sizes of 15-75mm. Plastics can be detected in any stream using the system. This ensures that mixed material streams can be split into fractions of ABS, PS, PC-ABS and PP, for example, or be cleaned of unwant- ed plastics such as PVC. Contaminants such as wood, rubber, glass, rocks and metal can also be separated. The black materials do not need to be separated from
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the coloured materials and the material stream does not need to be pre-sorted in any other way. Upstream regrinding of material is also eliminated. The system can process shredder fractions with grain sizes of 15-75mm directly. The Powersort 360 analyses material streams using laser spectroscopy. The system uses a powerful laser light to excite the molecules in the plastic parts. The light spectrum that the individual parts are emitting is then analysed. Each material has a specific spectrum, which acts as a unique identifier. The optical design with a powerful laser light source and an extremely high signal processing speed ensure that one million spectra can be generated and evaluated every second.
The geometry of the system
combines eight high-perfor- mance sorters in a single machine, which makes the best use of the laser system and the sensor technology. It consists of eight segments arranged in a circle. The high-energy laser system and the
sensor system technology are located in the centre of this circle. Together, the eight segments create an effective material scanning width of 4 m. Up to eight dif- ferent sorting tasks can take place simultaneously using these segments. In order to do this, the stream is guided over multiple segments in series. Alternatively, the plastic stream can run across all eight segments in parallel.
Unisensor adds that it has a compact, rotationally symmetric design and the system has a small footprint of less than 20 m². Factors such as potential moisture, dust, different grain sizes, the varying material densities of one plastic type and colours have no influence on efficiency. The system offers good sorting quality and efficiency as well as a high throughput. It is highly configurable and can be adapted exactly to customer-specific sorting tasks.
Click on the links for more information: ❙
www.mssoptical.com ❙
www.buhlergroup.com ❙
www.nrtsorters.com ❙
www.tomra.com ❙
www.steinertglobal.com ❙
www.sesotec.com ❙
www.unisensor.de
June 2017 | PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD 19
Left:
Unisensor Powersort 360
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