K 2013: Erema unveils what it calls a “new dimension" in plastics recycling

Düsseldorf — You know you're at K 2013, when there is a digital clock down, women playing saxophones and lots of champagne. All of that helped set the tone for plastics recycler systems provider Erema to showcase a new plant system.

Erema's new plant system, called Intarema, features new core technology and is based on the newly developed and globally patented Counter Current technology from Erema.

The company says cutting, homogenizing, heating, degassing, compacting, buffering and dosing is done in a single step as the patented cutter/compactor is the "centerpiece" of an EREMA facility. The flexible system can process a multitude of feed materials, regardless of which polymer type, density, shape and moisture content, and prepares it for the single-screw extruder.

"This is a crucial factor, because the better the plastic material is prepared already at the beginning of the recycling process, the higher the quality and throughput at the end of the process - in the finished recycled pellets," the company stated.

Feeding is automatic: loose material such as film shreds or regrind material is fed in via a feed conveyor belt and film enters direct on rollers using a roller intake system. The cutter/compactor cuts and mixes the feed material with rotating tools. At the same time the feedstock is dried, solely by the frictional heat, which is generated - and compacted ready for intake in the extruder. The inverse and tangentially connected extruder is now filled directly and continuously from the cutter/compactor with the material that has been pre-dried and pre-compacted.

The material contains hardly any oxygen and the melting procedure in a short extruder takes place with minimal shearing stress. The company says this means a stable extrusion process and less wear on the extruder screw and cylinder. Inside the extruder the material is melted, homogenized and then palletized after passing through a fully automatic, self-cleaning filter.

With the patented counter current system, Erema says the innovation is in the interface area of the cutter/compactor and extruder. To dat,e the worldwide technical standard has been a system in which the material in the cutter/compactor moved in the direction of the extruder. The difference with the Counter Current system is that the material spout in the cutter/compactor is now reversed and thus moves against the direction of the extruder. The company says the result of this inverse-tangential configuration is increased process stability and, at the same time, considerably higher throughput.