Extrusion 4-2018

New Sharp Eye Technology introduced 26 Recycling Extrusion 4/2018 TOMRA Sorting Recycling Drengsrudhagen 2 1385 Asker, Norwayy www.tomra.com/recycling nous materials, mainly soft items such as plastic, film, and non-plastic products. To then separate mixed PET into different polymers, AUTOSORT functions as a combined system, detecting material and colour in combination with grain si- ze. Even with a very mixed material in- put, this process achieves an impressive sorting efficiency of 95% or greater. More than a million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and within the next five years this num- ber is expected to increase by a further 20%. In response, EU regulations are tightening and organisations such as Plastics Recyclers Europe are instigating recycling guidelines for PET trays. This will encourage separate sorting streams to enable PET tray recycling and to deve- lop markets for this packaging product. A TOMRA AUTOSORT machine with the new TOMRA SHARP EYE technology is available for demonstrations by appoint- ment at the company’s Test Center near Koblenz, Germany. There is a video of the new application at: www.tomra.com/en/sorting/ recycling/your-application/ waste-sorting/pet-bottle-vs-tray New brand application, made possible by higher light intensity, will be a welcome breakthrough at a time when demand for plastic bottles and trays is growing internationally. T OMRA Sorting Recycling has introdu- ced a new technology called TOMRA SHARP EYE, which makes it possible to separate single-layer PET trays from PET bottles. This enhances the previous capa- bility of TOMRA’s AUTOSORT machine to separate multi-layer trays. This break- through is commercially significant be- cause small but critical differences in the chemical properties of PET food trays and PET bottles mean that they have to be separated for equivalent-product re- cycling. In addition to this, artificial intel- ligence embedded in TOMRA systems al- so enables seamless analysis of sorted products, making the future plants even smarter. Valerio Sama, TOMRA Sorting Recycling Product Manager, commented: “We ex- pect our new TOMRA SHARP EYE tech- nology to be welcomed by collection- and-sorting plants and by PET regenera- tion centres. Demand for this is likely to grow, because the widening internatio- nal adoption of on-the-go lifestyles is pushing-up the use of plastic drink bott- les and plastic trays used for fruit, vege- tables and other foodstuffs.” The key to this breakthrough is an en- hancement of TOMRA’s FLYING BEAM ® technology. As the first near-infrared (NIR) scan system with point-scanning (and no need for external lamps), this fo- cuses only on the area of the conveyor belt being scanned. Allowing a wide range of calibration possibilities, this can distinguish even the finest molecular dif- ferences in materials flowing down the recycling line – and now that TOMRA SHARP EYE introduces a bigger lens for higher light intensity, it is possible to de- tect even the most difficult to distinguish properties. The step-by-step process which conclu- des with the separation of single-layer PET trays and PET bottles is seamless and flexible. During the preparation for sort- ing mixed plastics into different poly- mers, packaging material collected or pre-sorted from municipal solid waste (MSW) first runs through a mechanical treatment process which reduces volumi-