HDPE RECYCLING LINES
High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) is used in a wide number of industrial applications, and postindustrial HDPE is an important source of material to be collected and recycled.
HDPE is non-biodegradable and can take centuries to decompose, so it is important to recycle it so it can be used again. Recycling HDPE has many benefits. It is more cost-efficient to produce a product from recycled HDPE than it is to manufacture ‘virgin’ plastic.
HDPE can be recycled many times. Around 10 times according to some studies, which prove that plastics injection molding and shredding techniques do not alter the material properties over the entire period of reuse.
HDPE is easily blow molded or injection molded into a bottle, can, tube or closure. It is usually extruded, so it is not necessary to perform a deep hot washing on the material.
HDPE/PP and PET recycling lines have several similarities and share part of the necessary machinery. Our HDPE lines are fully automatic and turnkey provided. Thanks to our modular system, we can easily design a line that meet your company needs. A Scada system is also available to monitor and control the lines.
This is the material reception zone. The input material, that is usually composed by bales of compacted HDPE/PP packages, is dumped inside a bale braker (debaler), where the bales are broken into single bottles.
Then, the material passes through a trommel, a dry separation system that removes small unwanted elements (stones, waste, sand, etc.) from the incoming material.
Finally, the material is dumped on a conveyor belt for a visual inspection, so no-HDPE/PP packages can be manually removed.
(*) An optical sorter (scanner) can be installed before the visual inspection belt. This machine is equipped with color and NIR cameras, so it can automatically sort the material by color and/or polymer type.
The packages are transported from the end of the visual inspection belt to the input hopper of a Schredder. This machine is designed to shred different kinds of hard plastics into smaller pieces.
At the output of the schredder, the the material is transported and dumped into a Granulator, where the pieces are cut again into smaller pieces, until they reach the necessary size so they can continue the recycling process. There is a screen installed at the bottom of the cutting chamber, to ensure that only acceptable size pieces can go out of the granulator.
HDPE pieces coming from the size-reduction zone are dumped inside a float separation tank, that is full of water, and where different kinds of plastics are separated by flotation.
HDPE/PP pieces float and get collected from the surface of the water by means of a screw conveyor, so they can continue the recycling process. Other high density plastics and materials sink and get collected and removed from the bottom of the tank.
At the same time, HDPE pieces are washed with cold water during the float separation process inside the tank.
From de tank, HDPE flakes are transported to a centrifugal dryer. Inside the centrifugal dryer dirt remains and water are removed from the surface of the flakes. Dirty water is also removed and filtered.
From the centrifugal dryer, HDPE pieces are transported and dumped inside a second centrifugal dryer. A total dewatering and a fine dirt removal is carried out, so the recycling process is almost finished.
Then, the material passes through a zigzag separator, where the already existing labels and dust can be removed and stored separately. HDPE pieces fall down on a vibrating sieve, where unwanted sizes are removed.
A magnetic rotary drum is installed at the output of the vibrating sieve, so metals are also removed.
At this point, the material is clean, dry and dust free. However, before storing it, it may be necessary to purify the material by color or to remove no-HDPE/PP pieces that need to be stored apart.
The material pass through a flake sorter that scan the material and perform the separation according to the configuration.
At the output of the sorting machine, the recycled material is ready to be stored in the bigbag stations. The bigbag stations can be equipped with an automatic weighing system, and a flake compacting system.
Our lines can be remotely monitored and controlled from any PC, mobile phone or tablet.
We have designed our own Scada system that provides real time detailed information about the line status, provides periodic and configurable production reports, etc.