Crown to target turnkey recycling market with lab

, Lynn Whitney, CDL’s executive vice president showed the area that’s been cleared for the lab and currently houses the tapered screw compaction feeder. The current economy has temporarily put the lab plans on hold, but Whitney believes it will be fully operational next year.

The heart of the system is Crown’s compaction feeder, which features a 16-inch diameter intake that tapers into an 8-inch output, so that 2-3 lb/ft³ of fluffier material is converted into 50-60 lb/hr of melt output. Whitney says the compaction line in Addison’s 30,000-ft² lab is the fifth of five, with the other four units operating in the field.

Once operational, the lab will take post-consumer and post-industrial scrap and work to develop customized turnkey recycling systems with equipment and machinery for shredding, washing, wet-grinding, flotation separation, and spin. The lab space also features a 30-mm twin screw extruder with a L:D ratio of 44:1 attached to an underwater pelletizer. Crown founder and owner George Holmes told MPW his company recently sold a scrap-retrieval system into Ireland for dairy scrap. Crown markets technology for recycling, pipe, and compounding, with plans to bring a 40-mm extruder, with pelletizer and belt dryer, to NPE2009. —[email protected]