Recycling 4.0 for the plastics industry

09 November 2016

Erema presented the first smart factory package in the plastics recycling industry at the K show: Careformance. This technical breakthrough enables the digital integration of recycling processes in the ongoing production process, the global interconnection of entire plant locations and, last but not least, documented quality of the recyclates at the press of a button. In combination with the new webshop for spare parts - Spare Parts Online - the business model of recycling has never been so smart.

Building on the high degree of automation of Intarema technology, Erema has for the first time developed online measuring equipment and digital analysis and evaluation tools which revolutionise the recycling process. Trade fair visitors experienced Recycling 4.0 live in the Careformance Recycling Centre in the outdoor area. Here they found an Intarema TVEplus 1108 with integrated Laserfilter which recycled some of the plastic waste from the K show live on site. The machine, quality and process data were transferred in real time to the Erema booth. Besides Careformance, Erema also presented significant new developments in recycling technology.

One highlight, especially for people interested in PET, is the new recycling system Xtreme Renew which Erema has developed together with Sipa of Italy, the leading manufacturer of PET packaging solutions. This accomplishment enables the direct and flexible processing of washed PET flakes to make preforms, signalling the dawn of a new era in PET recycling.

Trade fair visitors from the post-consumer sector, on the other hand, was able to judge the convincing benefits of the RegrindPro system for the recycling of regrind material. The advantage over conventional systems: a short extruder screw is enough to melt the already dry and thoroughly warmed regrind particles. The new RegrindPro is particularly convincing in respect of the flexibility of the input materials: PE, PP, ABS, PS or other regrind types can be processed without changing screws.

The new ReFresher was also of interest to the post-consumer sector. This enables recyclers to considerably reduce the - in some cases intensive - odour development in the production of polyolefin pellets. In the field of inhouse recycling, visitors to the show saw the new, direct flow filter SW Direct Flow for minimised contaminants.