TECHNOLOGY | SORTING
The original processing plant consisted of a bag
ripper, drum screen, air classifier and a sorting machine. The old system was capable of sorting a maximum of 2 tonnes per hour and the material was then pressed into bales and sold. This entailed a high demand for personnel in the manual sorting cabins. The conversion required renewal of the bag ripper, which had a positive effect on the process- ing of the feed material coming from the Viennese and Lower Austrian regions. The new plant allows for greatly improved and more consistent feed. This, in turn, increases throughput and improves sorting results. The built-in drum screen was kept and continues
Above: Redwave’s 2i sensor-based sorting
technology
Right: Hans Roth, Chairman of the Supervi- sory Board at Saubermacher, with Silvia Schweiger- Fuchs, Manag- ing Director at Redwave
yellow bags works in conjunction with a new film separator to ensure significantly improved separa- tion of the film fraction from the 3D fraction. In addition, one of the existing Redwave sensor- based sorting machines has been technologically upgraded. This sorter has been installed at the end of the sorting line to separate the Tetrapak fraction from the aluminium fraction. An additional Redwave near infrared sorting machine of the latest generation can now be found in the vacated space, separating PET from other plastics. The sorting results are further improved due to a bottle flattener that is situated near to the 2D/3D separators. This is an in-house development from Redwave. The company says that currently there are no comparable devices on the market that would be able to achieve the capacity required by the customer. The flattened and partially emptied PET bottles processed by the bottle flattener ensure even better sorting results and higher sorting quality. Aluminium cans and beverage cartons are also now being separated, in addition to 14 different plastic fractions. The automatic plastic sorting plant processes around 32,000 tpa of packaging waste, mainly from Graz and the surrounding area. In addition, about 40% of the material is used as a substitute fuel in the cement industry. Redwave has also been involved with Nemetz
Entsorgung und Transport. Its first sorting line was opened 30 years ago in a 1,400 m² hall in Leopol- dsdorf, Himberg, Austria. The company has recently purchased the new Redwave 2i and is currently converting its entire sorting plant. The plant’s conversion and use of two Redwave sorting machines will result in a significant increase in the efficiency of the entire sorting plant and also improve the sorting depth.
38 PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | September/October 2018
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
to separate the material into three fractions: fine, medium and coarse. The fine material (0-50 mm) is fed directly into a container, where it is then sent off for thermal use. Coarse material (>250 mm), which consists almost exclusively of films, is conveyed into a separate system area and manually re-sorted. The medium fraction (50-250 mm) is processed further and passes through a ferrous metal separator to the air classifier, where the material is freed from foils and light materials. After that, it is conveyed to the first three-way sorting machine – the Redwave NIR 2000. PET and HDPE are positively ejected by means of pressurised air in the first step and Tetra in a second step. The Tetra sorting process is then complete and this material remains in a box. The flow of the remaining plastic material stream is scanned by the non-ferrous metal separator underneath in order to obtain non-ferrous fractions. In the subsequent sorting cabin, the recovered non-ferrous metal is manually re-sorted in order to produce pure, high-quality aluminium, for example, for re-use in beverage cans. The PET and HDPE fraction then reaches the
Redwave 2i and is processed via two channels into five pure plastic fractions — HDPE, blue PET, green
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