UniSensor Sensorsysteme GmbH - Homepage
Rated • 1 review • environment, recycling, plastics recycling • iuveno-net.de
Some huge environmental success stories don't look glamorous or interesting - not at first sight, anyway.
This one is about closed-loop recycling of plastics, in other words being able to manufacture high quality plastic products such as drink bottles from recycled plastic rubbish that includes (say) drink bottles. This is a whole different thing from turning (say) discarded plastic bags into (say) plastic park benches.
The story starts here, with the mountain of plastic waste produced by the town of Milton Keynes in England.
If you play the BBC video (click any image), you will see the chain of amazing processes (and some serious science and technology) that results in these:
which are one-ton bags of pure polymer pellets, ready for bottle manufacture.
What has changed from previous plastic recycling processes is the purity of the final product, here being tested to food standards as part of ongoing quality control.
While some of the early stages in the process are amazing to watch (for example, the machine that identifies different kinds of plastic in a torrent of plastic fragments and blasts them in the correct direction using compressed air, at mind-boggling speed), it is the last stage that has made all the difference.
The wondrous machine responsible for it is called the POWERSORT 200, made by UniSensor Sensorsysteme GmbH. It is a laser sorter that can detect and remove contamination from billions of fragments, a trick that requires about 1 million spectra to be recorded and evaluated every second.
The punch-line: as well as saving on imported oil to make plastic conventionally and removing waste plastic from landfill, this one plant in Dagenham uses only half the energy of conventional oil-to-plastic manufacture, and is equivalent to taking 13,800 cars off British roads.
There may be a recession, but there are new industries, jobs and investment opportunities opening up all the time in the "green" sector. This seems like a good example to me!
[More links on the Dagenham closed-loop recycling story]
[Plastics recycling technology]
[All kinds of recycling technology]
[My "Environment and Technology" page]
[Permalink to this post]
This one is about closed-loop recycling of plastics, in other words being able to manufacture high quality plastic products such as drink bottles from recycled plastic rubbish that includes (say) drink bottles. This is a whole different thing from turning (say) discarded plastic bags into (say) plastic park benches.
The story starts here, with the mountain of plastic waste produced by the town of Milton Keynes in England.
If you play the BBC video (click any image), you will see the chain of amazing processes (and some serious science and technology) that results in these:
which are one-ton bags of pure polymer pellets, ready for bottle manufacture.
What has changed from previous plastic recycling processes is the purity of the final product, here being tested to food standards as part of ongoing quality control.
While some of the early stages in the process are amazing to watch (for example, the machine that identifies different kinds of plastic in a torrent of plastic fragments and blasts them in the correct direction using compressed air, at mind-boggling speed), it is the last stage that has made all the difference.
The wondrous machine responsible for it is called the POWERSORT 200, made by UniSensor Sensorsysteme GmbH. It is a laser sorter that can detect and remove contamination from billions of fragments, a trick that requires about 1 million spectra to be recorded and evaluated every second.
The punch-line: as well as saving on imported oil to make plastic conventionally and removing waste plastic from landfill, this one plant in Dagenham uses only half the energy of conventional oil-to-plastic manufacture, and is equivalent to taking 13,800 cars off British roads.
There may be a recession, but there are new industries, jobs and investment opportunities opening up all the time in the "green" sector. This seems like a good example to me!
[Plastics recycling technology]
[All kinds of recycling technology]
[My "Environment and Technology" page]
[Permalink to this post]
