Polypropylene recycling firm PureCycle has started up a feedstock preparation plant in Pennsylvania, bringing in plastic bales from MRFs and extracting the PP for processing at the company’s main Ohio facility.
The Denver, Pennsylvania, location started up in September, planning to buy and process both post-consumer and post-industrial bales. PureCycle spokesperson Christian Busey said the facility is primarily sourcing PP bales from MRFs across the Northeast to feed the facility.
PureCycle’s Ironton, Ohio, location, which the company calls a purification facility, uses a chemical solvent to dissolve polypropylene without a chemical reaction. The process filters out contaminants and allows the company to produce high-purity recycled pellets, company leaders have said.
Although the Ohio facility can filter out contaminants, the company wants to start with a certain threshold of bale purity. PureCycle prefers bales that are at least 90% PP, but “the purchased bales are typically found to be below this threshold,” according to a recent news release. In a recent interview, PureCycle CEO Dustin Olson said PP bale quality often varies widely, from 65% to 95% PP.
That’s where the Pennsylvania plant comes in. Calling it a regional pre-processing facility, PureCycle says the plant will clean up bales and provide the desired minimum quality before the material goes to Ohio. Equipment supplied by Machinex is used to remove not only non-recyclable contamination but also other plastic grades like HDPE and PET. Those other resins can then be sold to reclaimers that want them.
Machinex provided four optical sorters, two balers, two SamurAI sorting robots, an eddy current separator, a magnet and a trommel. The robots are using the company’s MACH Intell data analytics software, Machinex said in a news release.
The facility has a total capacity of 10 tons per hour, Busey said. He declined to disclose an investment figure for the facility.
