Making productive use of not only in-house plastic scrap but also incorporating post-consumer material is essential to fulfilling recycling and sustainability goals. But the varied nature of scrap material and regrind can pose real challenges to reprocessing. Today, many processes can incorporate a modest amount of scrap (5-15%) without too much difficulty. However, consumer and regulatory demands for plastic products with higher recycled content are pushing processors into unfamiliar territory, in which they are often being pushed toward using higher ratios of regrind material.

Compared to virgin pellets, regrind granules are more irregular in size and shape and have a lower bulk density, so they don’t flow and mix as well as virgin pellets. Differences in flowability and mixability are even more pronounced when it comes to regrind from thin-wall flake and sheet, film scrap, or foamed materials, which are even lighter.

Fortunately, Conair offers a full range of auxiliary equipment solutions to reprocess virtually every type of post-industrial scrap material, and to assist processors in reusing both post-industrial and post-consumer recycled materials at higher and higher ratios in the production mix. For over 20 years, processors have been using Conair’s equipment and expertise to steadily utilize more regrind and recycled material.

At Conair we believe in second chances.

As illustrated, these solutions touch every phase of plastics processing and are all part of our commitment to “Make Every Pellet Count.”

Shred

Shredding reduces large plastic products — everything from plastic automotive bumper fascia and trim to plastic water bottles — into a smaller size that is suitable for future granulation.  Our compact, ram-fed GP shredder is ideal for processing moderate amounts of post-industrial purgings, pipe and profile scrap, or sheet scrap.  The GP shredder and its intelligent control simplify the connection and operation of automated material conveyors, special hoppers, and evacuation systems, and can link to a secondary granulator to provide a turnkey size-reduction system.

Grind

Conair’s line of Viper granulators can turn any post-industrial scrap – from press-side scrap to high volume, in-line bottle, thermoform, and film scrap – into process-ready regrind. Thanks to advanced controls – like the SG2 control (Smart Granulator)—our larger, water-cooled Viper granulators not only manage internal temperatures to maximize cutting performance, but offer predictive maintenance capabilities that track knife status, rotor RPM, motor load, vibration, and temperature to help save energy, maximize performance, and minimize maintenance expenses.

Evacuate

Moving irregularly shaped shredded scrap and regrind from granulators through the size-reduction process requires robust and specialized material handling.

  • Our line of compressed air material loaders (CAMLs) use a compressed-air venturi to automatically unload granulated scrap from the material bins of shredders or granulators. From shredded chunks and irregular flakes to finely-cut regrind, our CAML-EVB unloads scrap to barrels or bins, while our CAML-EVG automatically loads scrap to gaylords.
  • To eliminate dust and fines from regrind, turn to our engineered material filtration products, including our DeDuster™ line of dust collectors, as well as fines separators and cyclones.
  • For hard-to-handle film scrap, Conair offers special wide-mouth granulators, inline granulators for edge trim, and our special ScrapSaver™ in-line film scrap feeder. Scrap film is collected in the specially designed ScrapSaver hopper, which agitates the film and meters out fluff scrap to the process using an auger, while a second hopper automatically dispenses virgin material. Both material streams flow directly to the extruder feed throat.

Dry

When it comes to sustainable drying of recycled materials, Conair offers several options.

  • Desiccant and hot air dryers feature resin-specific recipes that ensure reliable drying and resin processing while saving energy. Our temperature setback feature automatically tracks resin drying time and temperature, then, when resin is fully dried, ramps down heat input to maintain resin dryness while saving energy. Our new ResinWorks™ with Optimizer incorporates an AI-driven control to automate airflow across multiple hoppers, managing full or partial resin drying loads and delivering energy savings up to 40 percent.
  • Volatile traps, sometimes called plasticizer traps or demisters, protect desiccant drying systems by removing undesirable volatiles or contaminants from RPET or post-consumer regrind. These specialized traps are installed on the return line of drying systems, where hot return air passes through contaminant filters and demister cooling coils, which capture contaminants and condense volatiles into a liquid that drains easily out of the filter system. These filtration systems can also be used to deodorize recycled materials, such as post-consumer polyolefins from plastic milk bottles.
  • To reuse post-industrial and post-consumer PET, Conair also provides CR Series crystallizing systems that precisely reheat and agitate amorphous PET to a crystalline state. These systems feature a specialized, agitating hopper that gently tumbles material to enables uniform reheating and crystallization without the risk of agglomeration, resulting in dryer-ready RPET, ready for reprocessing.

Monitor

Monitoring resin moisture during and after drying assures that material quality remains consistent until the resin enters the machine feedthroat. Conair offers two solutions:

  • Drying Monitor is Conair’s in-hopper monitoring solution, which monitors and manages changes in temperature and moisture as resin moves through six levels, or zones, of the hopper. This feature, together with Conair’s hopper design, assures that every bit of resin that is released from the dryer is at the proper temperature and moisture level.
  • Conair’s Moisture Minder provides a final verification of resin moisture level at or near the machine feedthroat. This solution offers an ideal “check-and-balance” of moisture levels in resin lots that were properly dried, but that may be subject to temporary holding in bins, receivers, or conveying systems where moisture could potentially creep back into the material.   Moisture Minder provides the final validation you need to assure the lot-by-lot quality of your production.

Blend

Consistency and accuracy are essential to material blending, but feeding and blending higher ratios of regrind into the resin mix can becomes more difficult when there are inconsistencies in regrind shape, size, or bulk density.  Need a cost-effective way to introduce regrind to a process?  Here are a few suggestions:

  • The simplest solution may be a ratio valve, which uses a vacuum conveying source to draw a user-defined ratio of material (e.g., 80% virgin and 20% regrind) from separate sources and deliver them direct to the machine throat.
  • Another option is to utilize a feeder that is optimized for regrind, for example, Conair’s BFH hopper feeder, which incorporates a high-flow hopper design and regrind auger. This gives you the option to feed lightweight regrind either to a blender mix chamber or to a machine throat.
  • For maximum precision and accuracy in the virgin/regrind mix, you can also modify your blenders with hoppers that incorporate side-feed/regrind augers that efficiently meter regrind into a blender’s mixing chamber.
  • For hard-to handle film scrap, Conair’s ScrapSaver™ dual-hopper feeder offers a different approach. ScrapSaver receives film scrap into one hopper, which is agitated, augered, and then dispensed – along with virgin material from the second hopper – direct to the extruder feedthroat. This feed system adapts automatically to changes in extruder output, enabling maximum levels of fluff to be re-fed with virgin material without bridging, and without the need to re-heat or repalletize the film scrap.

Convey

To cope with virgin pellets and varied types of hard-to-flow regrind, you need a versatile and adaptable conveying system. Conair delivers with multiple conveying options:

  • Conair’s new Conveying with Optimizer employs an AI-driven control that automatically detects source-to-destination conditions (vacuum/pressure, receiver distance, material bulk density and other factors) then autonomously adjusts the conveying system in real-time to move material under optimal conditions. Conveying with Optimizer solution eliminates the risk of operator errors, reduces labor requirements, and can be retrofit to any conveying system that is managed with a Smart FLX conveying control.
  • Our Wave Conveying system offers another solution, enabling processors to select and automate conveying using multiple speeds and phases. Wave Conveying can not only prevent resin damage and waste for hard or soft resins (dust, shattering, angel hair), but can be customized for optimal movement of irregular regrind and flake materials.

Mold or Extrude

Whether you mold or extrude plastics, your end product can only be as good as the quality and consistency of your process and its ingredients. Conair is the only auxiliary equipment supplier that offers a full range of auxiliaries that are designed and engineered to work as a system to process post-industrial and post-consumer regrind, plus the knowledge needed to size and apply each of them properly.

Make Every Pellet Count

Every solution Conair provides is backed by laboratory and end-use testing to ensure that they handle new and existing materials, and are properly sized to handle your conveying, feeding, blending, drying, size-reduction, and other application requirements.

At Conair, we’re there for you to ensure you Make Every Pellet Count!