Italian plastics machinery specialist Amut (Novara; www.amut.it) has supplied a washing line to a new PET recycling facility built by CarbonLite (Los Angeles, California / USA; www.carbonliterecycling.com) in Dallas, Texas / USA. Amut said CarbonLite’s plant, which can produce more than 5,400 kg per hour of “highest quality” PET from MRF (material recycling facility) post-consumer bales, is just the second facility of this size operating in the US. The 23,226 m² bottle-to-bottle PET recycling plant processes more than 45,000 t of bottles annually. The washing section is capable of reaching a capacity of 6 t/h, Amut said.

Anthony Georges, president of Amut North America, said the line is equipped with Amut’s patented “de-labeller” technology as well as a wet whole-bottle prewash. “When you are dealing with co-mingled MRF bottle bales you need to be able to detect and remove all non-PET and colour PET containers prior to entering the final washing process,” Georges explained.

Amut’s two-stage process first uses a de-labeller, which dry cleans and detaches most of the shrink sleeve labels, and a second wet de-labeller, which prewashes whole bottles. Georges said, “This wet bottle washing technology utilises the filtered recycled flake washing water; therefore, it does not increase the consumption of fresh water used in the complete cleaning process.”

Amut has also supplied CarbonLite with a wet grinding system that turns bottles into flakes along with two flake friction washers and two sink-float separation machines, which are able to capture the polyolefin caps.

The CarbonLite project follows two other major PET recycling projects in North America. Here, Amut has supplied equipment, notably Unifi in Reidsville, North Carolina, and Petstar Coca-Cola Mexico – see Plasteurope.com of 30.07.2014.