PET RECYCLING LINES

As the automation requirements and the material conditions can vary a lot depending on every country and region, we have designed a modular and customizable system so we can easily meet your company needs.

We provide fully automatic turnkey solutions, and can integrate already existing machinery. Our lines are specially designed to minimize the energy consumption, and include a water treatment system to minimize the water consumption.

A Scada system is provided to monitor and control the lines.

Our plants produce high quality PET flakes, that meet the most strict specifications:

• Flake size: 8-14mm.
• Residual humidity: <0.8%
• Glues and oils: traces, negligible
• Odor: odorless
• Intrinsic viscosity: >0,7 (IV Davenport)
• No thermal degradation
• Contaminants:

— PVC: <20ppm
— Polyolefins (Pe,PP): <20ppm
— Paper: <20ppm
— Metals: <20ppm
— Dust: <0.5ppm

lPET-debaler

This is the material reception zone. The input material, that is usually composed by bales of compacted PET bottles, 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 bottles.

Finally, the bottles are dumped on a conveyor belt for a visual inspection, so no-PET bottles and color PET bottles can be manually removed.

(*) An optical bottle sorter (bottle scanner) can be installed before the visual inspection belt. This machine is equipped with color and NIR cameras, so it can automatically sort the bottles by color and/or polymer type.

lPET-molino

The bottles are transported from the end of the visual inspection belt to the input hopper of a wet grinder. This machine cuts the bottles into small pieces (flakes) which size will be determined by the installed screen.

During the process, water is introduced inside the cutting chamber, so a big part of the material dirt is removed. There is a filter and a water recirculating system installed to optimize the water consumption of the system.

At the output of the wet grinder, flakes are transported to the next zone of the line by means of a dewatering screw conveyor.

lPET-prelavado

PET flakes coming from the size-reduction zone are transported towards a centrifugal dryer so the dirt remains and residual water can be removed from the material. Removed residues and dirt are compacted, so it can be conveniently stored.

Dirty water goes to the water recirculating system, that includes a tank and different filtering elements to minimize the water consumption.

From the centrifugal dryer flakes are dumped in a float separation tank. Inside this tank, different polymers flakes are separated by flotation. PET flakes sink and get collected from the bottom of the tank, while Pe/PP flakes float and are removed from the surface of the water.

PET flakes are transported to a centrifugal dryer, where a second dewatering / dirt removal takes place.

lPET-reactor

The material coming from the pre-washing zone is stored in a buffering silo. This silo feeds a hot washing reactor.

The hot washing reactor contains high temperature water and detergent. The material remains inside during a fixed period of time. During this period of time, a heavy duty agitator removes the most severe glues and oil impregnations from the PET flakes.

At the output of the reactor, the material is transported and stored in a second buffering silo, that feeds the next zone of the line.

Thanks to the two buffering silos, the washing reactor can work both in continuous and in batch mode.

lPET-afinado

Washed flakes coming from the hot washing zone need to get completely clean and dry. From the buffering silo the material is transported to a centrifugal dryer to get rid of the dirt traces and water.

Then, PET flakes are dumped in two consecutive rinsing tanks. The rinsing tanks are full of water. At the bottom of the tanks there is an horizontal screw conveyor that pushes the flakes towards the opposite side of the tank, where a vertical screw conveyor collects the material. During this process, the remains of detergent and dirt are finally removed.

The next step is to introduce the clean flakes in a second centrifugal dryer for a final dewatering and fine cleaning.

Clean and dry flakes pass through a label remover so labels and dust still present in the material are removed.

lPET-flakes

At this point, the material is clean, dry and dust free. However, before storing it, it may be necessary to purify some color flakes or no-PET flakes that need to be removed and 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.

lPET-scada

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 status of the line, and provides periodic and configurable production reports, etc.