"Made from recycled plastic." Such inscriptions are found on a wide variety of products - canisters, comb, even children's toys. In the civilized world, plastic processing technology has already stepped far away - and allow plastic PET bottles not only in basins, but also ... in exactly the same plastic bottles. To date, there is only one factory working on Bottle-to-Bottle technology. Let's see how this production is arranged.
The plant "The Floor" was opened in 2007 on the outskirts of Solnechnogorsk near Moscow.
Today, 1800-2500 tons of plastic bottles per month are processed here. At the entrance - dirty used bottles, at the exit - pure raw materials for the production of new ones.
The collection of raw materials is made using sorting stations and household waste polygons.
Part of the raw material comes from hundreds of special containers for bottles installed by the plant in Solnechnogorsk, but it is a drop in the sea.
In Russia, they are not accustomed to the fact that the garbage can cost money, and its separate collection is not developed (the share of "cutting" at the plant is not more than 1%). Part of the plant bottles purchases from fitness clubs and hotels, but this weather does not. The main source of raw materials is the usual landfills from all over the country (even from the Urals), where the garbage is sorted by hand, distinguished the bottle from it, after which they pack and sell the factor.300-kilogram piles of dirty pressed bottles bring to the territory of the plant where they are waiting .
The first workshop is engaged in selection and sorting bottles. All Equipment Equipment European, from the leaders of the TBC processing industry - BRT Recycling Technologie GmbH (Germany), Tomra Systems ASA (Germany), RTT Steineert GmbH (Germany), BOA (Holland), Sorema (Italy), Buhler AG (Switzerland).
By and large, the plant could work automatically, but in Russian realities it is impossible. Automatic lines are able to distinguish and laying bottles of colors, but both in Europe, where plastic goes into recycling in its pure form, it does not work with us - due to the very strong pollution of the initial raw materials, human assistance is needed, and not one.
Painted bottles are pressed again into piles, and transported to the street - to the warehouse, where they expect to enter the second workshop.
After that, bottles are sent to the sink.
Here the container "erases" first in cold water, then in hot, then in an alkaline solution and a special detergent.
The bottle is washed out from the outside, the glue dissolves that the label was glued. After a series of washes - the next post of manual sorting and magnetic metal floor.
The next stage is crushing. Bottles are grinding together with traffic jams, after which the resulting flakes again pass the procedure for thorough cleaning. In a special drum filled with liquid, a bottle of bottle plastic is separated from the cork. They have different density, and cereal flakes float to the surface.
Bottled flakes pass the procedure for the final inductive metal removal, after which a special computer machine takes off the defective phones of another color.
Before launching further production, the trial of the resulting flakes is taken, which is sent to the chemical laboratory for various tests.
After that, the flakes of pneumotransport are fed into the third workshop on the extrusion and granulation line. The process is fully automated.
The process in the third workshop consists of several stages. Firstly, re-metal consumption, then pre-warming, removal of acetaldehyde and other harmful impurities, filtering. At first flakes cut in the shredder, after which the fox melts at a temperature of 280 degrees Celsius.
Amorphous granulate is transported to crystallization and further enters the reactor.
After a 16-hour polycondensation in the reactor, under the influence of nitrogen and high temperature, amorphous granulate turns into the final raw materials - high-viscosity PET granulate for the production of PET bottles.
Each batch of products is re-monitored - the obtained granules are closely studied by experts.
The finished product is packaged in large bags, after which they are sent to customers.
The granulate is approved for use in food packaging according to the expert conclusion of the FBUZ "Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology of the Moscow Region". The bottles of it are exactly the same transparent and clean, as from the usual granulate obtained by chemical means. That is why one of the factory customers is Coca-Cola.
In a year, the plant on which 150 people works can produce up to 10 thousand tons of finished products, but the current volume is less. The reason is the lack of source raw materials ... that is why one of the organizers of the tours to the Plant "Flus" is the organization ... Greenpeace. Ecologists welcome the separate collection of garbage and plastic processing - this process is three times less harming the planet than the usual production of plastic.
A serious reason to think!
A source