News: Impact Air Knife “sorts” Express Plastics Recycling Ltd Separation System

01/11/2006

Express Recycling & Plastics Ltd is one of the UK's first rigid plastic material recycling facilities based in Essex. Their 2 acre facility based in Rainham currently has an annual throughput capacity of around 60,000 tonnes.The recycling facility converts various grades of rigid plastic material collected by local councils into a granular form ready for resale.

To help support huge demands and to help minimise UK landfill waste volumes, Express Recycling & Plastics Ltd have undergone a re-investment program to increase the plants gross throughput capacity.

Impact Air Systems were called in to resolve the ongoing problem of removing unwanted lightweight material from the complex plastic recycling process such as paper, tissue, film, sand and grit.

The solution offer and installed by Impact Air Systems is an air knife separation system designed to blow air through a curtain of falling shredded material as it is transferred from one process to the next. The biggest challenge faced by Impact is to efficiently remove the unwanted material without removing the plastic material being recycled. Clever engineering, maximum control and close contact with the customer has ensured this key design criteria was achieved.

Once the unwanted material is efficiently removed, the next key challenge is to extract and convey the waste and airborne particles away from the Air Knife and collect the material in a suitable collection sack and filter the conveying air stream to maintain a clean production environment. This was achieved using an Impact high efficiency cyclone unit and dust bagging unit.

Darren North the site manager for Express Recycling & Plastics Ltd quoted "we have found it extremely difficult to find reliable companies such as Impact Air Systems that offer the level of innovation we need with such a unique recycling process. Impact have without a doubt fully supported our needs and as a result have helped us increase the gross throughput capacity at our Rainham Facility. We will definitely continue to work with Impact for any future investment or expansion projects"

 Visit Express Recycling at http://www.erpl.co.uk/