Sinea buys Gneuss system for recycling business

Sinea, a manufacturer of plastic packaging and caps for Latin American markets and recycler of postconsumer bottles to produce flakes, sheets, and thermoformed containers, has acquired a PET extrusion system from German company Gneuss (Bad Oeynhausen). This technology allows mixed reclaim material to be processed and taken directly from the wash line through sheet extrusion. The system comes with an FDA letter of no objection (LNO) allowing the sheet to be used for food packaging.  

The Gneuss MRS extruder enables gentle processing of reclaim and additive materials and offers a high devolatilization capacity. The polymer melt is delivered into a large single-screw drum, which contains eight small extruder barrels, parallel to the main screw axis. Satellite screws within the small extruder barrels are driven by a ring gear in the main barrel and rotate around the screw axis in the opposite direction of the main screw. This increases the surface area exchange of the polymer melt. The extruder barrels, which are cut into the drum of the multirotation system, are approximately 30% open to ensure optimal melt transfer in the barrels, allowing unrestricted devolatilization. 

Because undried and uncrystallized PET bottle flakes can be processed directly, energy and maintenance costs are reduced and thermal degradation is avoided, according to Gneuss. The flakes are gently processed and decontaminated in the MRS extruder, which efficiently removes all residual moisture and sufficiently decontaminates the polymer to warrant an LNO from FDA for direct food contact materials made from 100% postconsumer PET bottle flakes.

The melt is filtered through the fully automatic Gneuss RSFgenius screen changer sans pressure or process interruptions. The filter disk rotates incrementally, partially introducing a clean filter element into the melt channel. The large active screen surface area in the melt channel results in a pressure-constant process. Just before the contaminated screen is reintroduced into the melt channel, it is cleaned by an integrated back-flush piston. There are no changes to the product caused by screen changes or the back-flushing procedure.

“With our new MRS extrusion system we can manufacture different sheet formats, which gives us the ability to be more flexible and respond in a more personalized manner to our customers’ requirements," says Sergio Bravo, Vice President, Sinea. "One of the best features is the transparency [of the material], especially appreciated by customers making thermoformed packaging products for supermarket shelves.”