Post-consumer PE Film Recycling: also in South Africa now!

The first large-scale plant for the recycling of heavily contaminated PE film waste has now started running in Germiston South, near Johannesburg.

Delivered by HERBOLD MECKESHEIM, the plant can process up to 8,000 tons per year of film, used big bags and similar waste. The waste coming in bales are pre-sorted, shredded and foreign bodies are separated by means of a pre-washing unit in which also a first washing takes place.

Fig. 1: Charles Müller (Managing Director) and Deon Swart (Technical Manager) in front of the HERBOLD plant

Afterwards, further contaminations are dissolved in a wet granulator under intensive friction; a subsequent friction washer separates the dirty water from the product.
A hydro cyclone separates foreign plastics and specifically heavy contaminations from the target fraction. This separation process has a particularly high separation effect and ensures the high quality of the produced film flakes.

Fig. 2: Contaminated Input

In two drying steps, centrifugal dryer and hot air dryer, the product reaches a residual humidity which is suitable for the further material processing to pellets in a downstream extruder. With this recycled material high quality film can be produced.

Fig. 3: Herbold Rigid plastics plant