This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at Tecnología Vacurema para el reciclaje BTB de botellas de leche de HDPE

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VACUREMA Advanced eliminates pollutants and toxic substances adhering to post consumer waste

Vacurema technology for BTB recycling of HDPE milk bottles

Drafting PU01/12/2008

Mid-April of this year it has been seen the first Vacurema Advanced system in the northeast of England. The system has been designed by the Austrian manufacturer of recycling plants Erema, represented in Spain by Protecnic, for the recovery of waste of post consumption of HDPE to make pellets which come into contact with foodstuffs.

Waste Exchange Services Ltd. (Wes), one of the companies of the Group Greenstar, has expanded its facilities at Wilton International Technology Park, Teesside, especially for recycling 'bottle-to-bottle' of used HDPE milk bottles collected in the recycling chain. From the crushed and washed flakes, the Erema system is capable of producing up to 10,000 tonnes of high-quality recycled material to produce bottles of milk, only the first year. This fact, marks the beginning of recycling 'bottle-to-bottle' of millions of Great Britain HDPE milk bottles. In brief, Erema will send another Vacurema Advanced with the same configuration as the Wes and for the same purpose to another recycling company located in Greater London.

The basic concept of the Vacurema Advanced 1716 TE-VSV of Wes corresponds to the concept of plant Vacurema "bottle-to-bottle' of widely proven PET beverage bottles. However, note that they have been required some modifications to adapt to the process of polyethylene. In addition to the adjustment of the parameters of temperature of the process, which is considerably less than the PET, the profile of the extruder spindle has been reconfigured. Aligned with the Vacurema Advanced concept, the Wes system also includes a unit of pretreatment of evacuation in front of the vacuum reactor to intensify the decontamination of the flakes of HDPE. The extruder is desgasificadora, with a grid of 100 µm autolimpia more fine filters downstream and is connected directly to the cutting head for water Erema HG 342 P ring.

Greenstar is one of the leading companies in recycling and waste management of Great Britain. Thanks to his plans for expansion across Britain and the Republic of Ireland, the company can offer a wide range of recycling services, not only for the local authorities but also for customers and private companies. With a network of 27 regional locations and recycling in Manchester, Lincolnshire and Lancashire, Greenstar collects and recycles over 1.4 million tonnes of reusable waste every year. The type of collected waste ranges from urban waste mixed up waste separated from paper, glass, metals and plastics.

Since it was founded in 1983, Erema has specialised in develop, manufacture and distribute the world systems of plastic recycling and technology for the plastics processing industry.

The plant has a capacity of 1,500 kg/h of recycled HDPE production to be in contact with food. "In England, the keys to make it possible to prosecute Recycled HDPE to make milk bottles again are the absence of physiological objections and pollution." "However, so far not existed a sufficiently intensive washing process to prepare the bottle flakes satisfactorily to be recycled", clarified James Donaldson, founder and executive director of Wes. "With the Vacurema technology, we can ensure, as a rule, that all the pollutants and toxic substances adhering to post consumer waste are removed effectively." This has been demonstrated in all the tests carried out before. Despite these good results, we still have wanted challenge once again our new Erema system, performing an internal test which has been confirmed again that we have made an excellent choice "said Donaldson."

The Vacurema Advanced 1716 TE-VSV in the new facilities 'bottle-to-bottle' Greenstar, in use for the first time for the recycling of HDPE milk bottles.

From the crushed and washed flakes, the Erema system is capable of producing up to 10,000 tonnes of high-quality recycled material to produce bottles of milk, only the first year

In addition to its own tests with consumers, Erema has also taken part in an extensive program in Great Britain to create a recycling chain specializing in HDPE milk bottles. With the support of the British Government and under the guidance of WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), of Banbury, Oxfordshire, all members that are part of the life cycle of a bottle of milk have joined forces in this project: from vendorsdairies and manufacturers of bottles of milk, to recycling companies and manufacturers of plant and machinery. The objective of this project is to recover 30 per cent of recycled material to incorporate it into the life cycle of the bottle of milk; Great Britain processes around 130,000 tonnes of HDPE only for the production of milk bottles. When the corresponding tests of the different processing technologies were, it became clear that all the systems examined, only the Vacurema system fulfilled the requirements and was capable of converting the flakes of HDPE bottles of milk from post consumption into reusable materials to be in contact with food. Thus, this fact was tested and confirmed in what is called 'tests challenge'. In these tests the initial material is contaminated with a particular mixture of chemicals and the resulting recycled product is subjected to intensive chemical tests to analyse any possible residual contamination, as well as including practical tests on the products made from recycled material.

While WRAP began the process of recycling of HDPE, has also been awarded with the status of no-objection by the North American Food and Drug Administration (FDA). With a capacity of about 12,000 tons per year, Wes processes even waste of complex as metallised films and printed plastic, packaging bullets, parts of cars, etc. to obtain high quality recycled materials. As a chemical engineer in active, James Donaldson has noticed the high-performance technology and the good behaviour of the materials. And in the case of recycling, its decision clearly opted for the Erema technology: between 1999 and 2005 Wes has made a total of five Erema plants in operation, four of them with a particular TVE configuration of intensive degassing of the mixture through the placement of a filter before the opening of the extruder degassing. Thanks to the investment of the parent company Greenstar UD of Kingswood, Aylesbury (Buckinghamshire), on the new production facilities bottle-to-bottle to post consumption HDPE milk bottles and the new Vacurema Advanced, Wes, now with twice the virtual capacityYou can recycle a considerable range of plastics, including post consumer and industrial production waste.

HDPE recycling 'bottle-to-bottle' cycle: from post consumer milk bottles, passing through scales to be processed with Vacurema technology are converted into grade HDPE to be in contact with food to make new bottles of milk.