Plastics recycling equipment manufacturer Erema has upgraded its TVE product line of vented extruders with a change that dramatically increases the amount of gas that can be removed from plastics heavily contaminated with inks and additives, according to the company.
“We have put more distance between the screen changer and the vent section of the extruder and added a mixing section,” said Tim Hanrahan, president and CEO of Erema North America Inc. in Ipswich, Mass. “Because the plastics will be blended better, that means more plastics will be exposed to the vent system, and the vent system will be able to pull out more gasses.”
There will be no additional price premium for TVEplus, which will now be standard on any product in the TVE line, said Hanrahan. Erema North America is the U.S.-based distributor for Erema Engineering Recycling Maschinen und Anlagen GmbH in Ansfelden, Austria.
Erema said tests of TVEplus with heavily printed packaging film showed an increase of about three times the efficiency at removing gases from ink, binding agents and other additives, as well as incidental contaminating materials.
“This is for people who have difficult materials to reprocess — such as film houses and companies that process materials with a heavy print content,” Hanrahan said in a Feb. 25 phone interview. “With TVEplus, the pellet will be more solid and contain less volatile compounds.”
Erema said its TVEplus series can handle throughputs that range from 250 kilograms/hour to 2,500kg/h.
In the basic Erema recycling system, scrap material is fed into a large vertical cutter/compactor that uses friction to compress, size, reduce and pre-warm the plastic material, with the resulting scrap blended to produce a steady, predictable melt before it is fed to the extruder screw.
In the Erema TVE series, melt filters are placed ahead of the venting or degassing system.
Tel. 978-356-3771, fax 978-356-9003.
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