Swiss Recycling Firm Upgrades its S+S Sorting System

RecyPET AG, Fraunfeld, Switzerland, has installed an S+S Varisort Compact combined sorting system that includes optical and metal sensors.

RecyPET was established in 1998 and has operated a bottle-to-bottle PET recycling plant since September of 2000, according to a news release issued by S+S Separation and Sorting Technology GmbH of Schönberg, Germany.

The PET recycling plant operates with technology developed by U.S.-based United Resource Recovery Corp. (URRC) and Coca-Cola. The system has an input capacity of about 18,000 metric tons per year.

In Switzerland, the collected beverage bottles are sent to five sorting plants and sorted according to color and quality, compressed into bales and delivered to RecyPET AG (or other recycling facilities) for processing. The secondary plastic product made is used to produce new PET beverage bottles, food packing films or other films.

S+S Separation and Sorting Technology supplied a PetMag metal separator to RecyPET in 2001. The PetMag removes metal contaminants from PET flakes. Since the flakes are also to be sorted according to color, S+S, in cooperation with RecyPET, adapted a color sorting machine originally used in the glass recycling industry to the requirements of PET recycling. The result was the Spectrum color separator. By means of double-sided inspection it was possible to separate flakes contaminated with trace amounts of glue residue.

Compared to conventional belt sorting systems, “The Varisort Compact sorting system is characterized by a compact design requiring little space,” says S+S in its news release announcing the installation. “The use of high-resolution sensors and state-of-the-art signal processing technologies allows high detection accuracy and the analysis of up to 500,000 parts per second,” says S+S.

“The reliability and ease of maintenance of the S+S units convinced us, together with their performance, particularly in the separation of difficult contaminants,” says Kornel Büsser, production manager at RecyPET AG.

More information on the company can be found at www.sesotec.com.