03.20.15
Earlier this month, machine and plant manufacturers, recyclers and technicians gathered in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany, to find out about the latest developments in the collection and processing of used polyester bottles. The Polyester Recycling Forum of Dr. Thiele of Polyester Technology and the Open House of Gneuss Kunststofftechnik attracted a large number of visitors. Over 150 attendees viewed live demonstrations and presentations on the subject of polyester recycling in plastics technology.
As a lead-in to the subject, Dr. Ulrich Thiele from Polyester Technology reported on the state of the polyester recycling industry in China. With a collection rate in excess of 90%, just under 3 million tons of used PET bottles are collected in China. Along with another 2 million tons of imported waste bottles and 1.4 million tons of waste from polyester fiber production, well over 6 million tons of polyester recyclate are processed in China, primarily to make fibers and filaments.
David Swift from PCI gave a detailed overview of market trends in polyester manufacturing and recycling on a global level, focusing on Western Europe. According to this summary, particularly in Western Europe and the U.S., there are still significant potentials for improving the current collection rates of around 30% in the U.S. and just under 55% in Western Europe, thereby further increasing the amount of collected PET bottles. This would help to continually increase the currently low 75% capacity utilization level of recycling plants.
Dr. Martina Lehmann of MAKCS reported on the work of the RAL-Gütegemeinschaft, who have set themselves the task of creating binding RAL quality standards for PET recyclates based on collected PET bottles in order to thereby guarantee those processing PET recyclate greater process reliability and end product quality.
For the first time at the PRF, two plant manufacturers presented their processes for chemical polyester recycling. Dr. Meinolf Kersting from Uhde Inventa Fischer presented the flake-to-resin (FTR) process, with which pre-cleaned PET flakes are melted, degassed, partly broken down with glycol (partial glycolysis) and finely filtered, with the resulting glycolysate being mixed in with the oligomer flow before entering the polycondensation reactor. According to Dr. Kersting, this enables up to 50% of recyclate to be fed into the repolycondensation.
The EverPET process presented by Dr. Dirk Karasiak of Aquafil Engineering describes a different method. With this, the PET bottle waste is broken down with ethylene glycol to form the monomer BHET, which is then refined before being fed into the polycondensation. The process is designed to process up to 100% recyclate.
What all recycling processes have in common is that the collected PET bottles are first sorted, undergo intensive cleaning and all foreign incrustations are removed. One of the basic technologies for this is sorting. The company Se-So-Tec has specialized in sorting processes. Michael Perl, who runs the Recycling-Sorting division at S+S, reported on innovations and standards in the sorting of bottles with the "Vari-Sort" system that is done at the start of processing, and the sorting of the washed flakes at the end of the process using the S+S flake purifier.
The company Unisensor has also dedicated itself to the sorting of PET flakes. Jan Meyer of Unisensor Sensor-Systeme explained the ultra-high-speed laser spectroscopy used in the Unisensor Powersort system that allows a large number of impurities to be separated both efficiently and selectively.
The entire process for making pure PET flakes was addressed by Werner Herbold of Herbold Meckesheim. He focussed mainly on improved economy and greater energy efficiency, as documented in special work processes such as wet grinding of the starting material.
In the presentation of Andreas Christel, product manager responsible for PET recycling at Bühler Thermal Processes, the emphasis was on bottle-to-bottle (B2B) recycling. Covering all stages from the collected PET bottles to the ready-to-use bottle granulate, Bühler offers its customers the entire PET recycling process with which systems achieve throughput rates of 100 t/d.
Processing the cleaned PET flakes to make film, fibers, filaments or packaging tapes is always done using a melting process. Multi-shaft extruders with vacuum degassing have been found to be advantageous for this stage of the process.
The innovative multi-rotation system (MRS) from Gneuss Kunststofftechnik that was talked about by Dirk Nissen is established on the market. The MRS now functions as a core component for a whole series of applications such as cast film, fibers, multi-filaments or granulate.
On behalf of Coperion, Sabine Schönfeld presented some important features of the double-screw extruder ZSK Mc 18, the high energy density of which forms the basis for increased throughput capacities combined with gentle material handling. Like Gneuss, Coperion supplies a broad range of application processes.
To complement this group, Friedel Dickmeiß presented the process for converting PET bottle waste into textile filaments that has been developed by BB Engineering, with mainly rPOY being produced with the Variofil-R spinning unit.
Particularly in view of the still low collection rates in the U.S. and Western Europe, BBE sees good market potential for recyclate-based spinning units as collection results improve.
The conference was brought to a close by the presentations from the companies Automatik Plastics Machinery, for whom Andreas Vömel described the advantages of filter and granulating units in PET recycling, and Christian Schiavolin, who presented a new SSP process on behalf of SB Plastics Machinery. In this process known as "Moby", PET granulate is heated in a vacuum by mechanical movement from IR radiation sources, and is polycondensated in the solid phase. The systems are available for 50 to 2500 kg/h.
With over 100 participants from 14 countries in attendance, this year's forum once again demonstrated that there is an ongoing interest in the specialist field of polyester recycling.
Conference participants and guests also visited the technical center of the Gneuss Kunststofftechnik company based in Bad Oeynhausen. The company's extensive expansion of approximately 2400 square meters of production and administration floor space which was started in the middle of last year was completed in time for the Open House.
Over five tons of polyester recycling product were processed by the Gneuss MRS systems over the course of the half-day live demonstrations at the Gneuss technical center. Participants showed great interest in the production of deep-drawing film from 100% untreated bottle flakes to create a highly transparent and strong 400 µm-thick, food-grade film. The washed ordinary PET bottle flakes were fed without being pre-dried directly to the Gneuss multi-rotation extruder MRS 90 on the system installed in the technical center for the purpose of experiments, then decontaminated using a simple water ring vacuum system and filtered with the Gneuss filtration system RSFgenius 90. The dynamic viscosity was checked using the Gneuss Online Viscometer VIS.
The direct recycling of POY waste fibers that contained a large amount of spinning oils was demonstrated on another complete system in the Gneuss technical center. This involved shredding waste fibers without pre-treatment or agglomeration, feeding them directly into the MRS 90 extruder and filtering in the rotary filtration system RSFgenius. The final pelletizing was then performed by way of underwater strand pelletizing.
As a lead-in to the subject, Dr. Ulrich Thiele from Polyester Technology reported on the state of the polyester recycling industry in China. With a collection rate in excess of 90%, just under 3 million tons of used PET bottles are collected in China. Along with another 2 million tons of imported waste bottles and 1.4 million tons of waste from polyester fiber production, well over 6 million tons of polyester recyclate are processed in China, primarily to make fibers and filaments.
David Swift from PCI gave a detailed overview of market trends in polyester manufacturing and recycling on a global level, focusing on Western Europe. According to this summary, particularly in Western Europe and the U.S., there are still significant potentials for improving the current collection rates of around 30% in the U.S. and just under 55% in Western Europe, thereby further increasing the amount of collected PET bottles. This would help to continually increase the currently low 75% capacity utilization level of recycling plants.
Dr. Martina Lehmann of MAKCS reported on the work of the RAL-Gütegemeinschaft, who have set themselves the task of creating binding RAL quality standards for PET recyclates based on collected PET bottles in order to thereby guarantee those processing PET recyclate greater process reliability and end product quality.
For the first time at the PRF, two plant manufacturers presented their processes for chemical polyester recycling. Dr. Meinolf Kersting from Uhde Inventa Fischer presented the flake-to-resin (FTR) process, with which pre-cleaned PET flakes are melted, degassed, partly broken down with glycol (partial glycolysis) and finely filtered, with the resulting glycolysate being mixed in with the oligomer flow before entering the polycondensation reactor. According to Dr. Kersting, this enables up to 50% of recyclate to be fed into the repolycondensation.
The EverPET process presented by Dr. Dirk Karasiak of Aquafil Engineering describes a different method. With this, the PET bottle waste is broken down with ethylene glycol to form the monomer BHET, which is then refined before being fed into the polycondensation. The process is designed to process up to 100% recyclate.
What all recycling processes have in common is that the collected PET bottles are first sorted, undergo intensive cleaning and all foreign incrustations are removed. One of the basic technologies for this is sorting. The company Se-So-Tec has specialized in sorting processes. Michael Perl, who runs the Recycling-Sorting division at S+S, reported on innovations and standards in the sorting of bottles with the "Vari-Sort" system that is done at the start of processing, and the sorting of the washed flakes at the end of the process using the S+S flake purifier.
The company Unisensor has also dedicated itself to the sorting of PET flakes. Jan Meyer of Unisensor Sensor-Systeme explained the ultra-high-speed laser spectroscopy used in the Unisensor Powersort system that allows a large number of impurities to be separated both efficiently and selectively.
The entire process for making pure PET flakes was addressed by Werner Herbold of Herbold Meckesheim. He focussed mainly on improved economy and greater energy efficiency, as documented in special work processes such as wet grinding of the starting material.
In the presentation of Andreas Christel, product manager responsible for PET recycling at Bühler Thermal Processes, the emphasis was on bottle-to-bottle (B2B) recycling. Covering all stages from the collected PET bottles to the ready-to-use bottle granulate, Bühler offers its customers the entire PET recycling process with which systems achieve throughput rates of 100 t/d.
Processing the cleaned PET flakes to make film, fibers, filaments or packaging tapes is always done using a melting process. Multi-shaft extruders with vacuum degassing have been found to be advantageous for this stage of the process.
The innovative multi-rotation system (MRS) from Gneuss Kunststofftechnik that was talked about by Dirk Nissen is established on the market. The MRS now functions as a core component for a whole series of applications such as cast film, fibers, multi-filaments or granulate.
On behalf of Coperion, Sabine Schönfeld presented some important features of the double-screw extruder ZSK Mc 18, the high energy density of which forms the basis for increased throughput capacities combined with gentle material handling. Like Gneuss, Coperion supplies a broad range of application processes.
To complement this group, Friedel Dickmeiß presented the process for converting PET bottle waste into textile filaments that has been developed by BB Engineering, with mainly rPOY being produced with the Variofil-R spinning unit.
Particularly in view of the still low collection rates in the U.S. and Western Europe, BBE sees good market potential for recyclate-based spinning units as collection results improve.
The conference was brought to a close by the presentations from the companies Automatik Plastics Machinery, for whom Andreas Vömel described the advantages of filter and granulating units in PET recycling, and Christian Schiavolin, who presented a new SSP process on behalf of SB Plastics Machinery. In this process known as "Moby", PET granulate is heated in a vacuum by mechanical movement from IR radiation sources, and is polycondensated in the solid phase. The systems are available for 50 to 2500 kg/h.
With over 100 participants from 14 countries in attendance, this year's forum once again demonstrated that there is an ongoing interest in the specialist field of polyester recycling.
Conference participants and guests also visited the technical center of the Gneuss Kunststofftechnik company based in Bad Oeynhausen. The company's extensive expansion of approximately 2400 square meters of production and administration floor space which was started in the middle of last year was completed in time for the Open House.
Over five tons of polyester recycling product were processed by the Gneuss MRS systems over the course of the half-day live demonstrations at the Gneuss technical center. Participants showed great interest in the production of deep-drawing film from 100% untreated bottle flakes to create a highly transparent and strong 400 µm-thick, food-grade film. The washed ordinary PET bottle flakes were fed without being pre-dried directly to the Gneuss multi-rotation extruder MRS 90 on the system installed in the technical center for the purpose of experiments, then decontaminated using a simple water ring vacuum system and filtered with the Gneuss filtration system RSFgenius 90. The dynamic viscosity was checked using the Gneuss Online Viscometer VIS.
The direct recycling of POY waste fibers that contained a large amount of spinning oils was demonstrated on another complete system in the Gneuss technical center. This involved shredding waste fibers without pre-treatment or agglomeration, feeding them directly into the MRS 90 extruder and filtering in the rotary filtration system RSFgenius. The final pelletizing was then performed by way of underwater strand pelletizing.
