TECHNOLOGY | PET


Right: Tomra’s new Innosort Flake technol- ogy can sort a mixed PCR plastics stream into clean fractions of PET, PP, PE, and other materials


changeable colour background and dual-sided high-resolution cameras that can detect millions of colours and create single-colour fractions. Its high contrast imaging can differentiate between white opaque and natural, transparent, and translucent flakes, reducing material losses and maximising yield, says Piovesan. The unit also features an integrated cooling system for robustness and a more stable perfor- mance in challenging environments. Innosort Flake comes with up to four chutes and a changeable illumination background. This makes it possible to run multiple sorting recovery steps in a single machine, which brings considerable time savings and less material handling, the company says. Tomra’s Insight cloud-based data monitoring


platform can be installed as an add-on service to help optimise the processes through data analysis. The technology identifies inefficiencies and can pre- dict maintenance to further support the reduction of machine downtime and productivity losses. Sorting technologies group Sesotec has been involved in a new PET recycling project in Croatia. Austrian beverage producer Steinrieser joined forces with KIS Pica, a newly founded Austrian- Croatian trading company for beverage produc- tion, to set up a PET bottle recycling plant in the Donja Dubrava region of Croatia. The Rekis PET recycling plant has the capacity to produce up to 18,000 tonnes/yr of high-quality rPET pellets which are reused to produce new beverage bottles.


Below: Sesotec’s Variosort+ multisensory sorting system at the new Rekis PET recycling plant in Croatia


Sorting sensors The material is delivered in packaging waste bales, separated, and forwarded via an eddy current separator for separation from aluminium cans. However, to obtain rPET material for use in the food sector from the plastic bottles processed in this way, a multi-stage process is used. At Rekis, multisensor sorting systems from Sesotec are used to separate plastic bottles and, in a further step,


plastic flakes by type, says Filip Hozjan, plant manager. Rekis uses Sesotec technology for presorting, quality sorting and fine sorting of flakes. The first step of the process is pre-sorting, where


Sesotec’s Varisort+ multisensory sorting system conducts a positive sorting of clear PET bottles, which are removed and sent to the next sorting stage. Other plastic bottle types are then sent to the return sorting stage with all other materials. In the quality-sorting step, a Varisort+ system with Sesotec’s Flash technology examines the PET stream to identify foreign items for removal, to ensure the required grade purity. Undesirable polymers such as PVC, PE/PP, and coloured PET, and bottles with labels as well as metals, are reliably detected and rejected. The Flash technol- ogy detects bottles with special colours, including silver, opaque or TiO2, as well as bottles with a very low colour saturation. During the quality sort, the remaining, non- homogenous material from the two sorting systems is fed to another Varisort+ multisensory system where clear PET is sorted from the remaining materials. What remains is a mixture of coloured PET bottles and other waste. A manual quality control check is conducted, and a metal detection device is employed which identifies metals before the material enters the granulator. After the sorted material is granulated, shredded


into flakes, washed, and cleaned, a Sesotec Flake Purifier+ CMN multisensor sorting system detects and rejects metals, off-colours and any remaining undesirable polymer types. A Sesotec sorting system with multisensor technology can flexibly combine up to three sensors. A colour (C) sensor that is tied to a high resolution colour line scan camera can detect approximately 17m teachable colours when combined with innovative lighting options. A metal (M) sensor provides detection of all magnetic and nonmagnetic metal types, is easy to operate and provides simple sensitivity settings. An NIR (N) sensor connected to a hyperspectral camera can


20 PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | November/December 2023 www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com


IMAGE: SESOTEC


IMAGE: TOMRA


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