A new more sophisticated machine technology is needed for the reusable materials recycling of PET bottles.
New bottle designs are complicating the task of bottle recyclers: labels covering the whole surface of the bottle are an obstacle to optic sorting, and if these new labels have additionally been made of PVC, then the usual quality standard during reusable materials recycling cannot be maintained with the available technology.
With the new label remover HERBOLD Meckesheim GmbH has presented a new process step. The HERBOLD label remover makes a preliminary treatment of the bottles before size reduction possible: removing and separating labels is the important step for high quality recycling of PET bottles.
Quite a lot of problems arising during PET bottle recycling can be solved at the same time:
- Before size reduction, paper labels are removed and separated in a dry way: so the separation of the remaining quantity of paper fibres can easily be achieved.
- Labels often shrunk on the bottles and covering their entire surface (PVC is again advancing fast!) can almost completely be removed and separated before the actual size-reduction process, thus preventing sorting errors by an erroneous NIR identification, provided this new process step precedes whole-bottle sorting.
- Additionally, a certain preliminary cleaning is achieved during this step: abrasive components such as sand and foreign bodies are removed from the bottle surface at the same time as the label and separated, thus considerably increasing the lifetime of the knives.
- This technique also enables the removal and separation of obstructive bottle caps and silicone sealants to a large extent.
HERBOLD Meckesheim GmbH succeeded in solving this task with the help of the label remover by an efficient use of friction: this machine achieves the wanted result without undesired side effects: the breaking of bottle heads is almost completely avoided and, despite the mechanical impact, the entity of the bottle remains unchanged without being size-reduced in any way.
