Making the Plastics Economy Even More Circular

Com­plete sys­tems for indus­tri­al-scale plas­tics recy­cling from a sin­gle source – the recent­ly com­plet­ed merg­er between Cope­ri­on and machine man­u­fac­tur­er Her­bold Meckesheim makes it pos­si­ble. Cope­ri­on, tech­nol­o­gy leader in extru­sion and com­pound­ing, bulk mate­r­i­al han­dling and feed­ing sys­tems, brings its own exper­tise in the field of recy­cling togeth­er with that of Her­bold Meckesheim, spe­cial­ist in the mechan­i­cal recy­cling of plas­tic and plas­tic waste, form­ing a new Recy­cling Busi­ness Unit. This new Busi­ness Unit makes inno­v­a­tive process solu­tions pos­si­ble that rep­re­sent a new bench­mark in the efforts towards a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my in the plas­tics indus­try. Cope­ri­on is pro­vid­ing a first look at its inte­grat­ed recy­cling solu­tions at K 2022 (19–26 Octo­ber 2022, Dus­sel­dorf) at its booth 14/B19, at its Recy­cling Pavil­ion in the open-air fair­grounds (CE09), and at Her­bold Meckesheim’s booth 9/B34.

The new­ly cre­at­ed Recy­cling Busi­ness Unit is able to offer mod­u­lar sys­tem and plant solu­tions that com­bine the com­ple­men­tary tech­nolo­gies of Cope­ri­on and Her­bold Meckesheim to ben­e­fit cus­tomers. From mechan­i­cal pro­cess­ing – shred­ding, wash­ing, sep­a­rat­ing, dry­ing and agglom­er­at­ing of plas­tics – to bulk mate­r­i­al han­dling as well as feed­ing and extru­sion all the way to com­pound­ing and pel­letiz­ing, the sys­tems that both com­pa­nies have devel­oped togeth­er cov­er the entire process chain for reclaim­ing plas­tics. More­over, the plas­tics indus­try will prof­it from this cumu­la­tive exper­tise thanks to their com­bined glob­al sales and ser­vice network.

Expe­ri­ence PET recy­cling live

PET recy­cling is one exam­ple that illus­trates how Cope­ri­on will be able to imple­ment a com­plete sys­tem for plas­tics recy­cling in the future. As the plas­tics indus­try makes advances towards a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, PET plays an ever more impor­tant role due to its increas­ing use in dis­pos­able and reusable bot­tles and its recov­ery through deposit sys­tems, along with oth­er fac­tors. This mate­r­i­al pos­sess­es out­stand­ing recy­cling prop­er­ties, regard­less of whether it is to be recy­cled in bot­tle-to-bot­tle, bot­tle-to-film/sheet, or bot­tle-to-fiber process­es, or whether it comes from oth­er prod­uct streams.

Com­plete PET recy­cling solu­tions from Cope­ri­on offer through­put per­for­mance of up to ten tons per hour. The qual­i­ty of PET recy­clate man­u­fac­tured using Cope­ri­on recy­cling tech­nol­o­gy and decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed in an SSP (Sol­id State Poly­con­den­sa­tion) reac­tor is so high that it is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) for direct con­tact with food.

One unique fea­ture is that vir­gin mate­r­i­al and var­i­ous recy­clates – such as regrind, agglom­er­ates, or flakes – can be processed togeth­er, even if they exhib­it dif­fer­ent IV (Intrin­sic Vis­cos­i­ty) val­ues. Com­pared to con­ven­tion­al PET recy­cling pro­ce­dures, Coperion’s solu­tions save on oper­a­tion and ener­gy costs and cre­ate less logis­tic efforts. Vis­i­tors to K can see and expe­ri­ence key com­po­nents of this process at the Recy­cling Pavil­ion CE09/open-air fair­grounds and at Her­bold Meckesheim’s booth 9/B34. 

SML 60/100 SB 2 Granulator

This is a gran­u­la­tor used for crush­ing PET bot­tles and is suit­able for wet oper­a­tion. One unique fea­ture that it offers is hor­i­zon­tal force feed­ing using screw feed­ers. The gran­u­la­tor allows for space-sav­ing instal­la­tion and easy mate­r­i­al feed­ing. Up to two tons of poly­olefins or more than one ton of film per hour is processed.

T 2016 PA Mechan­i­cal Dryer

This mechan­i­cal dry­er is suit­able for var­i­ous mate­ri­als such as film, regrind, and mixed and rigid plas­tics. Thanks to its opti­mized design and the posi­tion of the exchange­able, wear-resis­tant pad­dles, it achieves up to 50% high­er dry­ing per­for­mance than its predecessor.

HV 70 Plastcompactor

The high-per­for­mance HV 70 Plas­t­com­pactor from Her­bold Meckesheim process­es mate­r­i­al in con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion between one rotat­ing and one fixed com­pactor disk, each equipped with screwed-on and eas­i­ly replace­able knead­ing bars. Since the mate­r­i­al leaves the com­pactor zone with­in a frac­tion of a sec­tion, the ther­mal impact upon the plas­tic is very low. The process is reg­u­lat­ed using two para­me­ters – the screw speed and the dis­tance between the disks.

FLUIDLIFT ecodry

The FLUIDLIFT ecodry process dries the regrind while it is being con­veyed to the extrud­er. A flash dry­er spe­cial­ly mod­i­fied for recy­cling regrind removes the mois­ture remain­ing after the wash­ing process. Mois­ture con­tent is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced which opti­mizes the ener­gy con­sump­tion of the down­stream process and leads to improved end prod­uct quality.

Smart Weigh Belt (SWB) Feeder

For feed­ing flakes and fiber, a Smart Weigh Belt (SWB) feed­er is used. This low-head­room gravi­met­ric feed­er can feed large quan­ti­ties of bulk mate­r­i­al into the extru­sion process at high accu­ra­cy, even at low and vari­able bulk den­si­ties. ZSK Twin Screw Extruder

Cope­ri­on ZSK twin screw extrud­ers are the heart of the plas­tics recy­cling process. With their high-per­for­mance pro­cess­ing prop­er­ties and high devolatiliza­tion per­for­mance, ZSK twin screw extrud­ers are suit­ed to ener­gy-effi­cient recov­ery of plas­tics of all sorts. The ZSK extrud­er fea­tures high end prod­uct qual­i­ty with gen­tle prod­uct han­dling, short res­i­dence time, inten­sive devolatiliza­tion, and out­stand­ing dis­per­sion with con­cur­rent­ly high through­put per­for­mance. In the Recy­cling Pavil­ion CE09/ open-air fair­grounds, Cope­ri­on is show­ing a ZSK 58 Mc18 twin screw extrud­er with a 58 mm screw diam­e­ter togeth­er with a melt pump, screen pack chang­er, and an under­wa­ter pelletizer. 

 Prod­uct Discharge

Divert­ers, melt pumps, and screen pack chang­ers fol­low the extru­sion step. Depend­ing upon whether pel­lets, fiber or film are to be man­u­fac­tured from the PET, Cope­ri­on pro­vides water baths and under­wa­ter pel­letiz­ers, fiber spin­ning pumps or film stretch­ing lines as part of their com­plete solutions.

New Recy­cling Inno­va­tion Center

The start of con­struc­tion on the state-of-the-art Recy­cling Inno­va­tion Cen­ter in June of this year demon­strates the impor­tance of the top­ic of plas­tics recy­cling for the mar­ket leader in extru­sion and com­pound­ing tech­nol­o­gy. This new test cen­ter for recy­cling appli­ca­tions is locat­ed in imme­di­ate prox­im­i­ty to Coperion’s exist­ing test cen­ter for bulk mate­r­i­al han­dling at its Niederbiegen/Weingarten pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Ger­many. In the future, every major step of the plas­tics recy­cling process can be test­ed under pro­duc­tion con­di­tions and results can be exam­ined by cus­tomers down to the small­est detail pri­or to mak­ing an investment.