How to Use Recycled Pellets in the Production Process - Post-consumer Waste

Plastic pellets are small granulates, used in Blown Film Machines, Injection Molding Machines, and other machines that produce plastic films, bottles, containers, bags, and more. These small pieces of materials are the most important in the process of plastic products.

Why is it important to recycle plastic products?

We need to be aware of whether the products that we consume can be recycled or not. If you know the material of your products you will know if they can be recycled and used once again in the production line. This time we will emphasize the materials that can be recycled like HDPE, LDPE, LLDPE, and PP; that have higher consumption compared to others.?(See the graphic)

As you can see in the graphic polyolefins (Mostly PE and PP) are produced on big scales because of their properties. Most daily life products are made from polyolefins. For this reason, it is important to recycle these end products.

How to recycle post-consumer plastic waste?

Post-consumer waste comes dirty and humid. Therefore, the recycling process will start with a washing line. The washing line will have three steps:

1. Crushing: The plastic waste will be put into a shredder to reduce its size.

2. Washing: The washing line will remove the dirt and grease that the waste contains.

3. Drying: After going through the washing line it is necessary to reduce the humidity of the waste to a level of 3%-5%. In this way can be recycled in the plastic recycling machine.

After the whole process, the material will be processed in the Plastic Granulator Machine. It depends on the material and shape of it of which recycling granulator machine will be the perfect fit to reprocess the post-consumer waste. Our recommendation is:

Two-stage Plastic Recycling Granulator Machine by POLYSTAR

Repro-Flex Plus?is a cutter-compactor integrated plastic recycling granulator machine, eliminates the necessity of pre-heating the material before extrusion. After cutting and compacting the waste will be fed directly into the extruder with a centrifugal force.

This recycling machine can reprocess PE and PP films, multi-layered film, stretch films, EPE foam, pre-washed film flakes, and non-printed and highly surface printed films (up to 95%). This is able thanks to the repositioning of the filter and the third degassing unit in the venting area between the first and second extruders.

The quality of the pellets produced by the two-stage recycling machine is higher than others. This is possible thanks to the die face pelletizer. This system is automatically controlled, in speed and blade pressure. The final product will be more uniform-sized pellets.

Recycled pellets for the plastic production

Each material has different properties, for this reason, it is important to know what you can do with them after the production of recycling pellets. Unlike the in-house recycled pellets, the post-consumer recycled pellets can’t be used to produce the same product as before.

For example, if you recycled in-house film rolls you can use the recycled pellets from these films into film rolls again. But in the case of post-consumer waste recycled pellets, there are different uses. These are some products that you can make with recycled pellets from post-consumer waste:

R-HDPE:?Industrial bags, detergent bottles, traffic cones, trash cans, flowerpots, and others.

R-LDPE:?Garbage bags, thermoplastics, containers, agricultural films, and construction films.

R-PP:?Battery boxes, broom fibers, plastic chairs, textiles, trays.

Most of the pellets coming from post-consumer waste are mostly used for injection and blow molding productions, but these pellets can be also used for such as garbage bags production too. Therefore, the cycle of the circular economy would be more completed.

This article originally appeared on POLYSTAR.

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