Mexico
HDPE Recycling
Recently Aceretech delivered a HDPE washing project to the Mexican market.
The client has been doing its own HDPE recycling cycle for many years. Recycling is just one sector within its group, whose main business is manufacturing and selling plastic products such as containers, trays, etc.
The plastic must be sanitized and homogenized. This step in the process will ensure that only HDPE is processed, because if other plastic polymers are found in the material to be recycled, it can ruin the final product.
Aceretech's equipment is a plus for this client in its recycling processes, and the quality of the recovered resins is greatly improved, with the 4 pelletizers that they have had since 2018.
What are the environmental benefits of HDPE recycling?
- The global market for High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) is one of the largest; it is estimated that it has an approximate market volume of 30 million tons per year.
- The amount of plastic used to make HDPE-based products has decreased by 70% in the last 21 years; this is thanks to the use of biodegradable materials and the recycling of plastic for reuse as raw material for new products such as trays, flower pots, pallets, etc.
- High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is a recyclable material; due to its characteristics and high malleability, it is a plastic that has properties to be reused and to be considered as a high-quality element for the creation of products.
- Recycling high-density polyethylene (HDPE) has many advantages. For example, it is much more economically profitable to produce a pallet from recycled HDPE than to manufacture them from “new” plastic.
- HDPE, like other plastic polymers, is produced with large quantities of fuel; approximately 1.75 kg of oil are needed to manufacture just 1 kg of HDPE. Therefore, recycling this material will always be better for the environment.
- This time, the project is about decontaminating post-consumer bottles.
In these bottles that are arriving, along with the study of our client, we learned that there will be oil, metals such as steel balls, springs, etc. that are designed for daily use. So, in this new washing line, we take into account the stages to decontaminate these foreign elements, while protecting the blades of the equipment as much as possible in the long term, and reducing unnecessary maintenance.
Below are some of the most important equipment in the washing line:
Crusher and mill equipment
Manual selection and friction washing
Flotation tank and Spray washer (spray washing)
The spray washer is the last stage in washing, which performs the washing process with clean water, and then we can obtain clean flakes, ready for the pelletizing or granulating process.
Recycling is all customized, according to the real situations of each client's plastics, we make their customized solutions, like this example. Aceretech has the complete process for HDPE, from grinding, washing, drying, and then pelletizing, in order to have high quality pellets.
Being able to make quality recycling is becoming more important every day with its advantages both in the environmental and economic sense. If you would like to know your solution, do not hesitate to contact us.