Minimize material losses, maximise product quality

Like in most recycling processes, companies such as World PET Recycling face the challenge of removing contaminants from recycled PET to meet the strict quality standards for food-grade materials. A major source of contamination is metallic foreign bodies, which can enter the material during the collection, processing, and preparation of plastic waste. To tackle this challenge, World PET previously used a GF metal separator to inspect PET flakes in the main material feeding line and remove metallic contaminants. However, this process led to significant PET material loss, as the entire contaminated fraction, including valuable material, was rejected. This resulted in an unnecessary loss of valuable material, impacting the company's efficiency and driving up production costs.

Against this backdrop, World PET sought a solution that would enable the recovery of high-quality PET material discarded with contaminants while ensuring that the end product remained free from metal impurities.

Sesotec´s partner in Portugal, Iberoacero provided a customized solution to this problem with the installation of the RE-SORT RV 070 unit. This advanced metal separation unit was designed to inspect heavily contaminated material and separate reusable PET from impurities. The RE-SORT functions as a secondary filtering system, complementing the existing GF metal separator by re-inspecting the reject fraction from the initial separation.

The material is fed into the RE-SORT unit via a hopper and is isolated through a vibratory feeder. It then passes through two key components of the system: the Extractor magnetic system and the Rapid Vario-FS metal separator. Together, these technologies ensure that both magnetic and non-magnetic metal contaminants are reliably removed. This ensures that only pure, metal-free PET material remains for further processing, while any impurities are eliminated.

A major advantage of the RE-SORT unit is its high sensitivity, enabling it to detect and remove even the smallest metal particles, less than 1 mm in size. This ensures compliance with the strict quality requirements for food-grade rPET and minimizes the loss of high-quality material.

Thanks to the installation of the RE-SORT system, World PET Recycling has been able to significantly reduce material loss. Efficiently and precisely, the solution separates metal contaminants and allows the recovery of reusable PET material. This leads to increased profitability, as less material needs to be discarded, while product quality is guaranteed to be metal-free.

Source: Sesotec