Sorting requirements. The waste from all three cities will vary, however the sorting requirements will remain broadly the same. The criteria in terms of recovery and purity have been set by the project as 80% and 95% respectively. The products to be recovered from the post-consumer packaging waste for the Plasticircle project are given in Table 5. Table 5 Materials to be recovered in Plasticircle project Sorted fractions End user Notes PET bottles Armacell CRF Ideally PET thermoforms should be removed from the bottle fraction, even mono-PET thermoforms. If it is not possible to develop the Picvisa technology to identify PET thermoforms Non-bottle mono-layer PET CRF Material not suitable for Armacell, validation for CRF is ongoing. May not be feasible to sort the non-bottle material using Picvisa sorters HDPE Derbigum Xxxx Rigid HDPE from bottles. Can increase material value outside of investigated applications by recovering the natural (clear) material PP Derbigum Xxxx CRF Can be rigid and flexible LDPE film Interval Xxxx Will be material that has been screened at 300 mm to ensure film is largely LDPE, although some HDPE will be present In order to achieve the required purity and recovery set out in the project, material will first need to be pre-sorted to remove metals, glass and fines. Once sorted the material must be screened at 300 mm, as is common for this material. The >300 mm and <300 mm will then be sorted using NIR sorting. An example of how to do this with the end users identified is given in Figure 3 below. NIR PE film NIR Waste Waste Packaging collection PP NIR NIR HDPE NIR NIR Mono PET tray PET bottle NIR NIR NIR Waste Waste Waste < 300 mm Mixed plastics Pre-sort > 300 mm material Figure 3 Separation flow diagram Colour End user Red Interval Orange Xxxx Yellow Derbigum Green CRF Purple Armacell
Sorting requirements. The sorting requirements have been set by the project are: • Sorting of five different plastic fractions o PET bottles; o Mono-layer PET trays; o HDPE bottles; o PP rigids and flexibles; and o LDPE film. • Materal loss <20%; precision in sorting >95% • PE film and PP film with rejects <5% • Final reject fraction will present <7% PET, <6% rigid PE and < 8% PP-PE films • Presence of biodegradables and PVC in sorted fractions <0.3% Recovering these fractions will ensure all valuable material is recovered and it should be able to be used by the end users (Armacell, Derbigum, CRF, Xxxx and Interval)
Sorting requirements explains that, even though the waste from all three pilot cities varied in type and quantity, the sorting requirements remained broadly the same. The criteria in terms of recovery and purity have been set by the project as 80% and 95% respectively. In order to achieve the required purity and recovery set out in the project, material will first need to be pre-sorted to remove metals, glass and fines. Once sorted the material must be screened at 300 mm, as is common for this material. A special focus is offered to the stages of material feeding, identification and ejection. All the details about the sorting technical process can be found here.
