EQUIPMENT SPOTLIGHT | MAY 2023 Sorting Systems

by MARY M. THORNTON

A 2022 study published by the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace noted that of the 51 million tons of U.S. plastic waste generated in 2021, only about 5 percent of it was recycled. Globally, the drive for greater plastics circularity and to maximize resource use is a topic of concern. Plastics are durable, efficient and convenient, making them beneficial to both consumers and businesses. As brand owners look to increase the share of recycled content, they are met with a new set of challenges – effectively sourcing feedstock from post-consumer and post-industrial waste. Ultimately, plastic sorting equipment must be used in the recycling process and the options involved are plentiful.

Action Equipment Company is dedicated to the design, manufacture and installation of vibratory equipment for the efficient processing of bulk materials. A key product for sorting is the Dense-Out® vibratory air separator, a rugged vibratory air knife. The conveyor uses air to separate “heavies” from “lights” when processing items such as plastic and paper from glass. The unit can be configured with single or multiple air knives, depending on the level of separation required. An optional Dense-Out addition adds a Taper-Slot® rugged, finger screen at the unit in-feed, which sorts fines from the stream. This product is popular in settings such as recycling, construction and demolition (C&D), glass cleaning, aggregate cleaning, removing rocks from biomass/hog fuel and auto shredder residue clean up.

“Action has always been innovative in bringing vibratory equipment to the next level. As a vibratory equipment leader since 1972, our commitment is to never settle and bring better solutions to a technology that has been around for decades,” president Andrew LaVeine explained. The firm’s Sub-Pan Free™ Dense-Out/Taper-Slot screen eliminates the sub pan under the screens. The product eliminates one additional, large surface area which could attract wet and sticky material. Instead, screened materials drop directly into a bunker or onto a takeaway conveyor. For many customers that handle problematic materials, this option reduces maintenance and cleaning time.

Rusty Angel, eastern region sales manager at Machinex, stated, “As the plastic recycling market is prone to significant fluctuations, a reliable sorting system that consistently produces high-purity materials is crucial. At Machinex, we understand that a purer end product translates into greater profitability. As such, we have incorporated the best sorting technologies available in the design of our plastics processing systems to achieve this goal.”

Regardless of the source (post-industrial, post-consumer, residential, or commercial collection) or grade of plastics, Machinex offers bottle grade optical sorting by type and color, magnets for removing ferrous, eddy currents for nonferrous items, and fine screens. Customized systems to incorporate shredders, granulators, and bale breakers are also available, Machinex’s MACH Hyspec® optical sorter offers accuracy and capacity to efficiently sort plastics by grade (PET, HDPE, PVC, LDPE, PP, PS, etc.) and color. Optical sorters can dramatically improve the purity of a given grade by sorting out the desired grade (or the non-desired grade(s)) from an inbound stream that may be contaminated. Purity levels of 95 to 98 percent are easily achievable with the use MACH Hyspec sorters.

With over 50 years of experience, Machinex experts have designed and installed hundreds of turnkey facilities in partnership with leading MRFs in Canada, the U.S., Europe and Oceania. The first company in Canada to design machinery for material recycling facilities in the ‘80s, Machinex continues to develop cutting-edge sorting, waste management, and recycling technology.

The TOMRA Autosort™ features an ultra-compact design with a versatile sensor-based configuration that can be used across a vast range of material sorting applications – including single stream, municipal solid waste, and commercial & industrial waste. “Compact, highly flexible and upgradable, Autosort brings together the industry’s broadest range of sensors, which can help mitigate feedstock supply and quality challenges. Using data to classify objects, the machine is capable of separating materials which are difficult, or even impossible to separate using conventional technologies,” said Ty Rhoad, regional director, Americas.

TOMRA’s Sharp Eye technology increases the light efficiency while maintaining the same energy consumption to enhance sorting sharpness and improves the separation of difficult to target fractions. Autosort also features TOMRA’s unique and patented advanced flying beam technology, which delivers enhanced light signal efficiency for improved detection at low operating costs. The integration of sharp eye and flying beam technology allows Autosort to consistently deliver high performance in terms of sorting accuracy across all target fractions – even in the most complex of applications.

Optional technologies include deep laiser, noted for its compactness and flexible range of uses. Its object recognition enables a deeper sorting sharpness to significantly improve the performance of the sorting process. It detects previously undetectable objects like black polymers and glass. Also available, GAIN uses a deep, learning-based sensor to classify objects and sort previously hard-to-sort objects. It resolves complex sorting tasks and achieves high purity levels without compromising throughput speed.

TOMRA Recycling designs and manufactures sensor-based sorting technologies for the global recycling and waste management industry. Over 8,200 systems have been installed in more than 100 countries worldwide.

Published in the May 2023 Edition of American Recycler News