Increase in quality and productivity

Plastics are irreplaceable in many areas of everyday life, and the challenge is that after use, the material continues up the value chain. In accordance with this challenge, the Mexican market is gradually incorporated into the circular economy; landfilling, incineration or export to other countries is no longer a solution.

As the demand for recycled plastics increases, so do the quality requirements. The quantity and quality must be adequate so that recycling can be used in as many sectors of the industry as possible. Currently, technological development has been focused on PET, and Mexico is implementing this technology mainly in this sector. The objective is in the near future also to implement these developments for the recycling of other plastics.

Herbold’s experience in the recycling of plastics, together with the hard work of the development department, has allowed it to optimize the cleaning processes of the materials, where hot washing stands out because the German manufacturer has the first to make it more efficient. washing processes more possible. Clear examples are also the Hydrocyclone that manages to fulfill the function of up to 20 flotation tanks in just one step or the StepDryer that achieves the drying of the material with a reduction of 75% in the generation of fines and more than 50% in the drying of the material.

Mexico has been a pillar of Herbold in the development of these technologies for both PET and other types of materials, as there are more than 30 systems installed nationwide and at least 15 are for Polyolefins. One of the most demanding successful applications is agricultural film washing.

Achim Ebel, head of Herbold’s Washing Systems department, describes the engineering achievements as follows: “As a solution to the most demanding requirements in the industry, the company adds custom process modules to existing customer systems. . This increases both the productivity and the quality of the recyclates, in addition to the modular design of our technologies allowing the amount of Initial Investment to be very positive in a cost / benefit analysis ”.

On this point, it should be noted that hot washing represents an important step in the process to increase quality in plastics recycling.

Initially, it was only used for PET bottles. However, the procedure today is used for other materials, such as thermoformed sheets, trays and sheets used in the Packaging industry, the latter many times based on Polyolefins.

Against this background, the chances of improving recycling quality and achieving a circular economy are very high.