Recycling machinery manufacturer Bollegraaf has announced it is building a massive Low-Density PolyEthylene (LDPE) sorting plant for Dutch plastics recycler Broeckx.
The 13.5 tonnes/hour plant will be built at Broeckx’s headquarters in Esbeek, in the south of the Netherlands. The new partnership was announced at the Plastics Recycling Show Europe (PRSE), taking place in Amsterdam on 19-20 June.
Bollegraaf is leveraging Melt Flow Index (MFI) technology to improve the quality and yield of the LDPE sorting process. The Netherlands-based manufacturer said the plant will be able to achieve a yield of up to 80% with quality matching original applications.
“We will be sorting based on the chemical properties of LDPE,” Arjen Molenaar, sales director at Bollegraaf, told Sustainable Plastics at PRSE. “First, we use a mechanical process adjusted to Broeckx’s requests. We've got a different machinery setup at the front end of the line, a portion is to sort the LDPE itself, which is more conventional, and afterwards we have a new machine which is capable of detecting and sorting the MFI of the materials.
“This MFI technology is of course important to be able to reuse the materials in high-value applications without adding a large amount of chemicals,” Molenaar explained.
The company’s technology allows Broeckx to control the MFI of the LDPE film, creating specific MFI groups.
“Of course some chemicals could be needed to bring the final product to the desired specifications, our aim however is to reduce the use of chemicals as much as possible,” Molenaar concluded.
Find Bollegraaf at Hall 12 stand B6.