How to improve the quality and processing process of recycled materials

        Circular economy is the most discussed topic in the development of the global plastic industry. The complexity of plastic waste is becoming increasingly high. In order to provide a recovery rate, in addition to sorting and cleaning, the screen changing system is also a very important part of the entire process.

          The screen changing system is the final work of the entire recycling process. The screen changing system performs the final filtration of impurities in the plastic melt to produce higher quality plastic particles. Traditional screen changing systems require frequent manual replacement of the screen surface, allowing plastic melt to continuously pass through the filter screen surface. When recovering waste materials with high levels of impurities and complexity, manually change the screen even at a frequency of once per minute. Frequent network changes require multiple operators, resulting in inability to increase overall production capacity and high material loss rates.

          In order to improve the efficiency of the overall processing process, the use of automatic screen changing systems to improve quality and efficiency has become a trend. Italy's FIMIC company has served in the plastic recycling industry for nearly 60 years. The automatic screen changing system RAS series produced by FIMIC has become a leading brand of automatic screen changing systems in Europe and the United States because it plays an important role in the complete set of recycling and processing systems, filtering 'fish that have leaked through the net' and producing high particle quality.

          In the past decade, FIMIC has responded to market demands by handling more complex and impure waste materials, performing finer filtration, and producing the best quality plastic particles. FIMIC has continuously developed and researched to improve the performance of its own products. Currently, it is possible to provide a filter screen made of laser drilling, with a filtering accuracy of up to 80 microns.

          FIMIC has been collaborating with most leading recycling companies for decades to assist in the recycling of plastics such as LDPE, LLDPE packaging films, PP woven bags, boxes and barrels, HDPE pipes and bottles that are common in the industry, with its automated screen change system. In addition to pursuing automation in filtration technology, FIMIC also studies various plastic properties to improve the filtration accuracy of the screen changing system. LDPE and LLDPE packaging films filtered by the FIMIC automatic screen changing system, such as wrapped films with paper labels, packaging films... After filtration, the film can be blown again, and the film thickness can be as low as 17 to 20 microns. In addition, there are also cases of HDPE bottle chip recycling. When filtering the fineness of a 100 micron mesh surface, HDPE raw materials with low fluidity can still easily yield 1500 to 1800 tons per hour.

          The produced HDPE recycled particles can be used to produce high-quality HDPE pipes with high load. With the promotion of circular economy issues, plastic recycling is not limited to traditional PE plastics. The market has unlimited imagination for recyclable plastic materials, hoping to reduce the environmental pollution caused by various plastic products, and truly implement circular economy and recycling.

          Through experience, FIMIC has reviewed the usability of automatic screen switching. After trying and improving its own automatic screen switching system, many previously classified as difficult to recycle and more complex plastic materials, such as PVC (hard and soft) and household appliance waste recycling. Filtration through the FIMIC automatic filtration system has been successfully recycled.

          During the processing of PVC, vinyl chloride is produced, which is prone to produce corrosive acids and materials are prone to rapid degradation, leading to recovery failures. After three years of uninterrupted testing, FIMIC has successfully overcome the above problems and developed an automatic network switching system dedicated to PVC recycling. In 2019, we successfully installed an automatic mesh changing system in a large horticultural water pipe production plant in Germany to recover soft and hard PVC pipes.

          The main recycled material in this factory is PVC garden water pipes with 0.5 to 4 percent impurities in PE and PA threads. Recycling of waste electrical appliances is also an important issue, as plastic for waste electrical appliances contains more complex impurities, such as metal fragments, elastomers, etc. These impurities are easy to consume spare parts, and metal impurities are more likely to cause losses in the network exchange system, thereby reducing the recovery rate of household electrical appliances waste.

          In addition to the automation function, FIMIC's RAS screen changing system is designed to reduce the chance of metal or other hard impurities coming into contact with the network surface, significantly reducing spare parts costs, thereby increasing the willingness of recyclers to recycle waste electrical appliances. A waste appliance recycler located in the Scandinavian Peninsula, mainly handles scrap appliances made of ABS and PP. Originally, oil pressure was used to manually change the mesh, and the mesh surface needs to be changed every ten to fifteen minutes. A total of four operators are required for both machines to check whether the mesh needs to be changed at any time. After using the FIMIC automatic network switching system, the customer only performed the first network switching after three months of use, and only one operator was required to inspect both machines.

          In addition, due to reducing the frequency of screen changing, the overall output has increased by 20%, and the filtering accuracy can also be as fine as 150 microns (100 meshes). In addition to significantly improving the quality of recycled materials and the efficiency of processing processes, FIMIC's network switching system also helps more users increase profits, significantly reduce operating costs, and promote more possibilities for circular economy operations.