Stadler launches new conveyor

Equipment manufacturer Stadler, Altshausen, Germany, has released the Stadler Px acceleration conveyor. The company says it launched the equipment to meet the demand for higher throughput in sensor-based automatic sorting, which can operate at higher working speeds.   

The company says it has integrated features of its BB and DB conveyors and has taken the opportunity to introduce a host of improvements. They include a new air stabilizer, which ensures consistent sorting quality at faster speeds with light materials, resulting in purity of the output.  

“At Stadler, we are always very alert to how our customers’ needs evolve,” says Corinna König, the team leader of product management of Stadler. “We found that we were increasingly combining our BB and DB conveyors in customers’ projects to achieve the desired result, so we developed the PX, which combines the best features of each into one conveyor. This means that our customers now have only one machine to operate and maintain, simplifying their operation and reducing their costs.”  

König says they also significantly increased the belt speed, even with light materials, so they can increase their throughput with just one machine.  

Italian company Irigom Srl has installed six PX conveyors at its secondary solid fuel (SSF) plant, designed to separate and recover all valuable material from the incoming plastic waste. The recovered polyethylene terephthalate (PET), low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and polypropylene (PP) are sent to a recycling facility while the residue is used to produce high-quality SSF. The conveyors have been operating for three months, sorting PET, LDPE and PP materials for recovery, metals and polyvinyl chloride, which is removed from the process.   

“The PX is performing very well. The fast speed up to 4.5 meters per second allows us to significantly increase the total material input while maintaining a high-quality output,” says Stefano Montanaro, CEO of Irigom.  

The new PX conveyor carries over the solid frame construction and long service life of its predecessors, the BB and DB models. It features a slot to fit a sensor under the belt and is compatible with NIR and EM sensors from various manufacturers. It offers a belt speed ranging from 3.2 meters per second to 4.5 meters per second and can be specified with two motors to ensure the necessary torque at the required speed. The head drum is available in a choice of two diameters: 125mm and 220mm for the best detachment of the material.  

The material on the conveyor is accelerated and straightened so that the sensors fitted in the slot can detect the material on the conveyor at all speeds. An optional stabilizer improves performance by optimizing the positioning of the material on the belt with an airflow. The result is a higher throughput with consistently high sorting quality and higher purity levels of the blown-out fraction, even at top speeds with light materials such as paper or film.  

The PX benefits are compact in size and designed for easy transport. The frame, with the belt already mounted, can be separated into three or four sections, depending on the length of the conveyor. These can be stacked for transport and are simple to reassemble on-site. Even the model with the widest, 2900mm belt can be loaded on standard trucks or containers, also cutting down on transport costs.