Auxiliary Equipment for Plastic Recycling Lines

The mechanism. A washing tank soaks and moves material through water; a friction washer at 720 to 1,200 rpm makes the flakes scrub against each other. Soaking removes what is loose, friction removes what is stuck on. That is why lines handling glue, labels or fine dirt carry both, sometimes with a friction washer before and after density separation.

Anything that differs from your material in density. PP, PE and EPS float; PET, metal and stone sink. That covers caps in a PET stream, stones and metal fines from collected material, and foam. What it cannot do is separate polymers of similar density, PVC from PET being the important case, which needs optical or X-ray sorting instead.

Centrifugal dewatering removes the bulk of the water mechanically, and hot-air drying afterwards takes rigid flake below 1 percent. Film is different: water sits in the folds where a centrifugal dryer cannot reach it, which is why film lines use a JG squeezer rather than relying on a spinner alone.

Depends entirely on the material. On rigid flake a centrifugal dryer plus hot-air drying is enough and a squeezer adds little. On film the squeezer is the machine that matters, because it reaches water a spinner cannot and it densifies the material so the pelletizer can feed it. Lines running both rigid and film often carry both.

Often yes, and that is why we sell them individually. What limits it is space at the right point in the process and spare electrical capacity. If you think you may add a stage later, say so at the quotation stage and we will leave the room and the power for it, which is far cheaper than making space afterwards.

Both. All four of these are sold individually, including into lines built by other suppliers. We will ask more questions in that case, because the machine has to match your existing capacity and process rather than an ideal one, and getting that wrong just moves the bottleneck.

No. Desiccant and hopper dryers that condition resin for moulding are a different product family, and specialist suppliers do them better with local support. Our dewatering equipment removes wash water from recycled flake, which is a different job. We are happy to specify the interface so equipment you buy elsewhere fits our line.

Because material has to climb. At 20 to 30 degrees with water spraying continuously from the top, flake is scrubbed against itself all the way up the incline, which gives a much longer effective residence time than a horizontal machine of the same length. The bearing housings are isolated from the water path, which is what keeps a wet machine at over 1,000 rpm serviceable.

In plastic recycling, auxiliary equipment means the support stations between the main machines: sink-float tanks, friction washers, squeezers, centrifugal dryers, screw conveyors and storage silos. Note that the term means something different in injection moulding, where it usually refers to resin dryers, chillers and material loaders. These pages cover the recycling sense.

Dewatering is effectively mandatory once material has been washed, because nothing downstream tolerates free water. Everything else is conditional. A sink-float tank earns its place only when densities genuinely differ, a friction washer only when dirt is stuck rather than loose, and a squeezer mainly when film would otherwise carry water into drying. If your stream does not create the problem, the machine is cost without return.

On a complete line supplied by us, yes: the stations run from one central cabinet with interlocks, so a stoppage downstream stops the feed upstream instead of flooding it. Single machines added to an existing line are normally supplied with their own local starter, and integrating them into your existing control system is separate engineering work that should be listed in the quotation rather than assumed.