Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2021 - 10

what's new
Gneuss' MRSjump
extruder for PET
Robots
Universal Robots introduces
cobot with increased
payload capacity
these can be used with stretch films containing
recycled content without any problem.
The system is able to package up to 110
pallet stacks per hour using film strengths
of between 40 and 150 micrometres. The
company found that the new films, even
those containing a high percentage of
post-industrial recycled material, behave
like conventional plastic material during
processing and can be safely used for all
existing applications.
Plasma coating can replace
multi-material structures in
Recycling
PET decontamination and IV
control in one step
While PET bottle recycling has become
well-established, with bottle flake a
sought-after secondary material, the industry
is now also looking at other potentially
recyclable sources of PET waste, including
post-industrial fibre waste and post-consumer
thermoformed pots, tubs and trays.
The important difference in recycling
these materials is that whereas with PET
bottle flake, a certain IV drop during extrusion
is acceptable, the IV of fibre waste or
thermoformed pots, tubs and trays is at a
level that any further drop would result in
unacceptable mechanical properties. Typically,
the only answer is to install a complicated
and/or energy intensive liquid phase
or solid state IV boosting process downstream
of the extruder.
The new MRSjump version of Gneuss'
MRS extruder for PET addresses this issue
by providing a significantly increased surface
exchange rate under vacuum, so that
partial polycondensation takes place within
the extruder, making it possible to retain the
input IV.
Additionally, the intense devolatilisation
and long residence time of the polymer under
vacuum can be controlled to provide a
consistent output IV in spite of the inevitable
variations in the residual moisture level
of the input material.
Like all MRS extruders systems, the
MRSjump offers a decontamination performance
to food contact levels. Yet it also
enables the IV of the PET to be maintained
and controlled in one single extrusion processing
step, with no pre-treatment and no
need for an additional melt or solid phase IV
boosting process. The result is a lower energy
consumption, better material quality,
greater flexibility, smaller machine footprint,
lower complexity, less operator attention
and the possibility of using types of raw
material which were previously uneconomical
to recycle.
10
May/June 2021
New UR cobot with a greater payload.
Universal Robots (UR) is launching an enhanced
UR10e with an increased payload of
12.5kg (27.55lbs), creating new possibilities
for applications such as palletizing, machine
tending, and packaging. The robot's
price remains unchanged.
The UR10e is suitable for palletizing applications
with cartons weighing up to 10kg
and a 2.5kg gripper. The cobot is now more
versatile for other material handling tasks, as
well, such as loading and unloading heavier
workpieces in machine tending deployments
and the packaging of heavy items.
In addition, the updated UR10e also provides
plug-and-play compatibility with products
from Universal Robots' UR+ ecosystem
of hardware and software peripherals, ensuring
that users can quickly and easily get
started with collaborative applications.
Packaging
The Beumer
stretch hood
easily handles
films
made from
recycled
materials.
packaging
IonKraft, a start-up founded in April 2021,
has developed a process using plasma technology
to produce recyclable plastic barrier
packaging that can replace multi-material
solutions. Based on research work carried
out by the plasma technology working group
at IKV on plasma-polymer barrier and corrosion
protection coatings, IonKraft now aims
to translate this into industrial applications.
IonKraft is developing a reactor that
coats plastic packaging, providing it with
a chemically resistant barrier function and
generating a strong migration barrier. The
advantage of the plasma coatings is that
they can be applied in extremely thin layers
to monomer materials without impairing
their recyclability. The technology is therefore
suited for many sectors and applications,
including food packaging, for which
the process has already been approved.
Here, the coating acts as an oxygen barrier
and prevents the oxidising of the contents.
The plasma reactor developed by IonKraft
is intended to be able to coat containers
both inside and out. Such a two-sided coating
could serve, for example, as an odour
barrier, by encapsulating the odour of the
recyclate. In a separate project at IKV, research
is currently being carried out as to
what extent the coatings are suitable for
making post-consumer recyclate safe for
reuse in the food sector. The enterprise is
being largely financed by the German Federal
Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy
through the EXIST research transfer
programme.
Recycled content no problem
As the use of film with recycled content
continues to expand, especially since 2019,
when the new German packaging law went
into force, there were concerns that the
stretch hoods currently used to package
pallets and other loads would be unable to
handle these films.
Beumer Group has therefore thoroughly
tested its stretch hood A systems to ensure
The IonKraft solution for sustainable
packaging. IonKraft photo
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2021

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