A recent report estimates up to 50,000 tons of blades per year will enter the end-of-life stream in the U.S. by 2023. | Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock
Groups representing electricity producers and composites manufacturers released a study exploring landfill diversion options for wind turbine blades.
The government is looking to support liquefaction technologies to convert plastics Nos. 1-7 and other materials into high-energy-content liquid products. | Kedardome/Shutterstock
The U.S. government is looking to provide up to $4 million to advance development of technologies to convert recovered plastics into feedstock for fuels.
RePolyTex is gearing up to operate its Madison, N.C. facility at full scale, manufacturing a “plastic plywood” product from shredded e-plastics. | Courtesy of RePolyTex.
A U.S. plastics recycling and manufacturing facility is preparing to begin taking in plastics recovered from electronics. The plant will use that feedstock to produce construction materials.
Most shrink-sleeve labels pose challenges for PET bottle recycling, but recycling-friendly innovations were recently recognized by the Association of Plastic Recyclers. | Jared Paben/Resource Recycling, Inc.
Three shrink films for PET bottles and a collection of label inks have passed recyclability reviews by the Association of Plastic Recyclers.
NRT is currently producing about 75 mask comfort products a day, with the first 300 to be delivered to Nashville hospitals May 6. | Courtesy of National Recovery Technologies (NRT).
Normally, NRT’s 3D printer is busy producing parts for optical sorters and other recycling machinery. But amid the pandemic, the company is also using the technology to make mask straps that help out health care workers.
If EVOH is used at too high of a level in an HDPE container, it can damage the quality of the recycled HDPE. | Koray Akar/Shutterstock
An innovation is allowing natural HDPE bottles containing higher levels of EVOH to be recycled into pellets that are free of yellowing, gels and specks.
Coperion K-Tron’s feeder can be used for both loss-in-weight feeding to continuous processes and loss-in-weight batching direct to batch blenders. | Courtesy of Coperion K-Tron
The variability of recycled plastic streams doesn’t just present challenges in terms of extruding and molding products. It also complicates the feeding of plastic into compounding equipment.
The EWS 60/210 shredder is designed for high-volume applications. | Courtesy of Herbold Mecksheim.
Herbold Meckesheim USA has released size-reduction equipment tailored for plastics recycling.
Tomra Sorting developed Sharp Eye because the percentage of thermoforms in PET bottle bales has been increasing. | Courtesy of Tomra.
PET thermoforms bring special baggage to the recycling process: Optical sorters often fail to differentiate them from bottles, and thermoform flakes are more prone to breaking into fines.
A pelletizing and melt delivery equipment company opened a lab in North Carolina, and a U.S. thermoforms company begins using sheets from resin made partly through a PET depolymerization process.