Transform ‘difficult’ plastic purgings
to valuable regrind
EQUIPMENT
Low-cost PRS does job considered too risky for expensive granulators MAGUIRE Products, Inc. has enhanced its Purging Recovery System™ (PRS) for transforming purgings into regrind and has received the CE certification required to make the PRS available in Europe. The PRS is a two-stage system that first planes rock-like purgings into small pieces, then reduces the pieces to uniform, highquality regrind. A purging consists of the transitional material that passes through an extruder as the operator shifts from one job or colour to another; typically it is discharged onto the shop floor, hardens, is scraped up and disposed of, ultimately ending up in a landfill. The PRS is the only equipment designed specifically for the rugged work of size-reducing these heavy masses of plastic, according to B. Pat Smith, Maguire’s vice president of marketing and sales. While the PRS is already used to reclaim purgings of many widely used polymers, the new enhanced design extends its applicability to flexible vinyl, which stretches when worked by cutting blades and can jam conventional granulators; and to shear-sensitive polymers like polystyrene, which can melt as frictional heat builds up in standard equipment. The design improvements permit reclaim of 85 Shore A vinyl, such as that
commonly used in wire and cable. “PRS systems now in use by injection moulders who make multiple colour changes consistently recover purgings at a rate of 455 kg per eight-hour shift,” said Smith. “This is accomplished with minimal energy consumption – an average of 7.5 kWh – since the PRS uses three small motors with a total horsepower of 11, as against motor sizes of 100 horsepower or greater for a standard heavy-duty granulator.” An operator loads a purging into the containment chamber of the purging recovery system.
www.maguire.com On the left are samples of the small pieces produced as the rotor knives plane away material from the purging. On the right is the highquality regrind that is produced when the small pieces are processed by a compact granulator beneath the purging recovery system table.
New plant concept for VACUREMA Prime technology Users of this system can produce food-contact grade flakes, pellets users of PET recycling plants are in search of a system that allows them to determine the form of the processed rPET themselves – i.e. choose between flakes and pellets. The new plant concept is a compact and space-saving all-in-one solution – Erema’s answer to the strongly fluctuating rPET market. Due to the extreme price fluctuations for PET flakes it does not always make sense to produce only pellets, as the difference in price to virgin material is too low and there is neither a market nor customers for rPET pellets. Relloy’s EREMA technical team, Doug Scott and Barney Mkhatshwa, with Enrico Anelli, Relloy’s agent for the Cape area
EREMA has developed a flexible plant concept for the proven Vacurema Prime technology which now enables users to produce both foodcontact grade flakes and pellets. The outcome of a market survey that Erema conducted in the USA and Europe was clear: 68
The solution: 3 in 1 The new plant concept for Vacurema Prime technology enables three different operating modes. This way, plant operators can generate the processed rPET in different physical forms to meet market requirements – while remaining flexible as a result. • Mode 1: production of 100% rPET pellets • Mode 2: production of 100% rPET flakes
• Mode 3: simultaneous production of rPET flakes + rPET pellets With the new concept, not only decontaminated, pre-dried and crystallised rPET flakes but also high-quality, melt-filtered rPET pellets can be produced. Both products are suitable for direct food contact and exceed all minimum quality and purity requirements. Batch operation of the Vacurema Prime technology guarantees an exactly defined minimum treatment duration for every single, thin-walled PET flake. Thanks to the individually adjustable batch times the degree of purity and the required IV value can now be adapted individually, regardless of the operating mode selected. • RELLOY IS THE AGENT FOR EREMA IN SA www.erema.at www.relloy.co.za