By Ron Shinn
A unique pre-processing facility operated by PureCycle Technologies Inc. has made a big leap in technology by eliminating all human sorters and delivering polypropylene (PP) bales that are more than 95 percent pure.
The facility, located in Denver, Pa., uses high-tech sorting equipment from Machinex Industries. It takes in bales of PP already sorted by MRFs that might typically still contain up to 35 percent of non-PP plastic material and other contamination. After pre-processing, PP bales that are at least 95 percent pure are sent to PureCycle’s chemical recycling facility in Ironton, Ohio.
The 325,500-square-foot pre-processing facility has been operating since last October. It is PureCycle’s first such facility.
The challenge for Machinex, which is based in Plessisville, Quebec, was to apply its technology in a hands-off system to sort 10,000 pounds of PP per hour. This was Machinex’s first installation to totally eliminate human sorters.
“We don’t necessarily consider ourselves to be a sorting company, even though that’s kind of what we do,” said Rusty Angel, eastern regional sales manager for Machinex. Angel oversaw the PureCycle installation. “We’re a technology company, and we use various types of technology to get into the stream and mine out more effectively than we could before.”
The Machinex system extracts polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and ferrous metals, all of which PureCycle can sell to other recyclers. It also eliminates dirt and other contaminants.
Once the Machinex equipment was installed, it took only one week of operation to reach target capacity of 10,000 pounds per hour, complete calibrations and train operators, Angel said.
Step 1 is a fully automated dewiring machine from Cross Wrap Ltd. that can handle up to five bales at a time. Once the wire is cut and extracted, the material dumps onto a conveyor for transport to a trommel. The trommel’s spinning motion de-clumps the material, and small particles such as fines or dirt are dropped through 2-inch diameter openings in the trommel.
Next, the material runs past a magnet to remove ferrous materials, then past the first Mach Hyspec optical sorter to separate out PET and HDPE.
The next machine is an eddy current separator to remove aluminum.
Everything that is left goes through a second optical sorting process to remove anything that is not PP.
“By positively ejecting PP twice, we are able to give them very high purity,” Angel said.
The Machinex system also uses two SamurAI sorting robots. “That’s one way for us to eliminate headcount,” Angel said.
Two II-RAM balers complete the system.
The facility has a total of four Mach Hyspec optical sorters. The sorters use a high-speed, short-wave infrared (SWIR) hyperspectral detection system that can identify a wide range of plastics, plus fiber products, metal, wood and colors. 3D volume detection depth is up to about 1.4 feet.
The SamurAI four-articulation sorting robots can make up to 70 picks per minute, or about double the average picks per minute rate for a human sorter. The SamurAI uses artificial intelligence to identify distinguishing features in the same way as a human eye. It can recognize material in dirty and commingled conditions.
A Mach Intell intelligence platform is connected to each HySpec sorter and robot. The dashboard gives operators real-time data about the material stream. This includes flow composition, volume of each material type, material trends and total material seen by the sorter.
PureCycle buys bales from MRFs in the northeast U.S. Its chemical processing plant in Ohio turns recycled PP into nearly virgin PP and needs recycled material with a higher purity level than MRFs typically provide.
“PureCycle needs bales in the 94 percent to 95 percent range of pure PP,” Angel said. “Their downstream equipment can handle some contamination, but they don’t want to throw 30 percent contamination in there. It reduces the yield of their machines and creates some chemical issues.”
Angel said recyclers who use a mechanical process want bales with nearly the same level of purity, but post-consumer material is more difficult to process without human sorters.
“In a single stream, if you are collecting from someone’s house, it could have garden hose or Christmas lights or other contamination that makes it challenging to process without people to get out those large items,” Angel said. He said Machinex is working to solve that problem.
Sorting single-stream, residential material is the biggest part of Machinex’s business, but Angel said the expertise it has gained and the equipment it has developed enable it to tackle projects like the PureCycle pre-production operation.
“We have worked with other plastics recycling facilities in the past, but PureCycle is the first one that is 100 percent automated, and they are doing a pretty significant amount of tonnage,” he said. “They have no sorters on the line now.”
If PureCycle relied on only traditional human sorters, it would take an estimated 20-25 people to reach the same volume and purity level the Machinex system is achieving, Angel estimated.
Another project Machinex is working to solve is to separate food-grade PP from non-food-grade by repurposing the second sorter. “They have different values in the marketplace,” Angel said.
The PureCycle installation is scalable but currently has additional capacity. Angel estimated it could increase its current 10,000 pounds per hour to 11,000 pounds to 12,000 pounds per hour and maintain the same purity standards.
In its most recent SEC filing, PureCycle reiterated plans to build additional pre-processing facilities in the future and said it has leased a site in central Florida. No timeline for construction has been announced.
Angel said he is pleased that Machinex equipment was selected by PureCycle for the installation. “We have latched onto the PureCycle vision” of using chemical processing to turn PP waste back into near-virgin PP. “They are making a splash. I think they are a bit of a game-changer in what they are doing,” Angel said.
Contact:
Machinex Industries Inc., Plessisville, Quebec, 877-362-3281, www.machinexrecycling.com/sorting
Ron Shinn | Editor
Editor Ron Shinn is a co-founder of Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing and has been covering the plastics industry for more than 35 years. He leads the editorial team, directs coverage and sets the editorial calendar. He also writes features, including the Talking Points column and On the Factory Floor, and covers recycling and sustainability for PMM and Plastics Recycling.
