HILLER decanter takes over water treatment from the cleaning of PET plastic bottles

.

PET bottles are one of the most commonly used beverage packages in Germany. For environmental reasons, the recycling of PET bottles is becoming increasingly important, on the one hand to avoid waste and on the other to reduce emissions of climate-damaging CO2.

Since 2008, Pet Recycling GmbH has been recycling around 13,000 tonnes of PET beverage bottles annually in 3-shift operation into PET flakes, which are then returned to the production cycle. State-of-the-art processes and technologies ensure the highest purity and quality of reusable recyclates. Prior to this recycling process, the bottles are collected and sorted and then cleaned of dirt, beverage residues, labels and adhesive residues.

Water treatment in batch operation

The washing water produced is then separated from the solids produced in the cleaning process in batch operation. One batch contains the cleaning of dirt or beverage residues from the bottles: Solids are separated from the water by a HILLER Decanter DP31.

In the second batch, the water used to remove the labels from the bottles is purified. The process water is heated and the dissolved adhesive of the labels must then be cleaned from the water. This is also done with the help of the HILLER decanter and an additional filter, which is used after the decanting process.

The washing water cleaned by this process can be returned to the process circuit. This protects the environment and reduces production costs.

The PET cycle ensures economical and environmentally friendly recycling

The cleaned bottles are then used to produce the so-called PET flakes. These recyclates can then be reused to produce new bottles or processed into a wide variety of products such as films, packaging, fillers, etc.