More than 6,000 readers of Kunststoff Magazin, a leading German-language trade journal for the plastics industry, selected our innovative development from over 40 nominations. And - applause - awarded it 3rd place in the Peripherals category!
In early March, the award was ceremoniously presented to us in Haar, near Munich, Germany. Markus Schmudde, Head of Research and Development Compounding & Extrusion, and Marina Matta, Team Leader Process Engineering Recycling, proudly accepted the award.
We would like to thank Kunststoff Magazin for organizing the competition and all those readers who voted for us and the ZS-B MEGAfeed!
Innovative side feeder for plastics recycling
The ZS-B MEGAfeed side feeder allows the recycling of plastic fibers and flakes at very high throughputs. Thanks to its innovative design, plastic recyclate with bulk densities starting as low as 20 kg/m³ can to be recycled and compounded at high throughput rates in the ZSK twin screw extruder.
Until now, plastic recyclate with such low bulk densities was considered to be feed-limited and therefore not economically recyclable. With the ZS-B MEGAfeed, even this material can be fed into the ZSK extruder in very large quantities and recycled economically. At the same time, thanks to high rates of the ZS-B MEGAfeed, a smaller ZSK extruder size may already be sufficient to achieve a certain throughput rate.
Results from tests with a ZSK 58 Mc18 twin screw extruder in our Test Center prove the success of the ZS-B MEGAfeed. When recycling PA fibers with a bulk density of ~40-50 kg/m3, throughput rates of only about 70 kg/h could be achieved with conventional equipment. Significantly more material was able to be fed into the ZSK 58 Mc18 via the ZS-B MEGAfeed, resulting in a 14-fold increase in the overall throughput: 1,000 kg/h. A similar result was achieved when recycling carbon fibers with a bulk density of ~50-70 kg/m3: throughputs increased from 50 kg/h to 2,500 kg/h. When recycling PCR flakes, throughput was increased from 50 kg/h to 700 kg/h, and in the recycling of flakes from multi-layer films from 80 kg/h to 1,300 kg/h.
