Innovative filter for plastics

On the occasion of its open house devoted to "Advanced recycling of heterogeneous materials", held at Icma San Giorgio on 19 and 20 February 2013, Filtec (a company specialising in the production of underwater and water ring cutting systems) unveiled its agreement to distribute in Italy the products of German manufacturer Ettlinger, and in particular the innovative ERF automatic rotary filter.
ERF is a continuous rotating melt filter system that maintains perfectly constant process parameters. It was developed for filtering even highly contaminated plastic materials, and finds application especially in recycling, regeneration, compounding, and film and sheet extrusion.
The impurities in the incoming material are trapped on the surface of a rotating micro-perforated drum. At each rotation the drum is scraped clean by a knife and the foreign material is removed from by a carryout screw. This ensures the entire filtering surface is always completely available.
The rotation speeds of the drum and carryout screw are controlled independently of each other. This ensures that, even in the case of highly contaminated material, the percentage of clean material needed to eject the impurities is minimal. This is one of the great advantages of ERF over the systems commonly used. The filter is also able to automatically respond to sudden spikes of impurities in the input material, and always maintains a constant output pressure, with a maximum variation of ± 2 bar.
Alberto Baracco, sales and marketing manager of Filtec, told Macplas that, after numerous meetings in 2010 and 2011 to assess the real opportunities for collaboration, the company struck a deal with Ettlinger last year during the Plast trade show in Milan.
At the company's facility in Badia Polesine (Rovigo) there is an ERF filter available for running filtering tests, mounted on a complete Filtec extrusion and die cutter line.