Extrusion International 2-2019

21 Extrusion International 2/2019 Reinforcement for 100% Food Grade PET Business “We have been working with AMUT for a number of years to develop an excellent technological and yet economical so- lution to meet our high standards for r-PET flakes. AMUT is a proven machinery and technology manufacturer that has demonstrated how to best meet our goals and objectives,” stated Yash Awasthi, Vice President of Indorama Ventures North American Operations regarding this project. Awasthi continued: “The new plant will process more than 100 million pounds of plastic bottles annually into clean PET flakes to produce our FuTuRe-PET ® – AMUT washing section is capable of reaching 4,000 kg/h. The processed bottles are extremely dirty being post-consumer landfill collected. These are the dirtiest bottles seen in this market and AMUT tech- nology is able to obtain the premier value clean PET flakes from them. The cleaned PET flakes will be used to produce new resins for a variety of sustainable products which our clients now demand for their PET packaging products. Our goal is to close the loop on recycling and increase the sustain- ability of the PET containers”. The new Indorama Ventures recycling facility will be located in Guadalajara, Mexico, at their Ecomex JV in close proximity to their resin production site. The new recycling plant will be operational in the fall of 2019. AMUT will also upgrade an existing unit at the ECOMEX plant as well, making the fac- tory capable of producing over 13,000 pounds per hour of highest quality PET flakes from post-consumer PET bottles coming from landfill. The new washing plant has been purposely developed by AMUT experts to cope with the necessity of processing very dirty PET post-consumer landfill collected bottles. These bottles are the dirtiest and require a wet-cold-cleaning tech- nology incorporated in the de-labeller unit. The De-Labeller removes the labels, especially the full body shrink sleeves, to improve the bottles quality to go through the following cleaning operations. The turbo and friction washer machines, AMUT patented technology, normally perform the cleaning phase. In this case, the combined action of these two machines needed to be boosted: the friction force has been increased to remove not only fine pollutants, labels and glue but even the soil. Pre-washing and de-labelling phases are carried out in a cold water process while the turbo and friction washer have hot water flow. The bottles are always subject to a high level of cleaning and pollutants removal inside each machine as they undergo a non-destructive high friction and proper residence time. AMUT technology optimizes the operational costs: fresh wa- ter usage is reduced to minimum because the water, that is continuously filtrated, can be re-used during the whole pro- cess and the consumption of energy and cleaning agents is really restrained. AMUT Group www.amutgroup.com Plant view