LDPE plastic film recycling

Let's open the description of this line clearly telling this is one of the most difficult material to handle so, if this is your starting point, be very careful about what you're doing.
As we said before, somewhere in this pages, all washing lines are washing a surface and, in film recycling, surface is a lot while weight, that's what matters, is not that much or always less than you think in the best case.
Film is normally an elastic material and this makes cutting pretty difficult, plus the fact nobody knows which kind of contamination it's going to be into etc.
So let's approach the matter splitting the system into its main different sections:
Cutting is, of course the first one, washing the second and drying the last (but not least)
There are different ways to cut film and each one of them can be good for some situations and absolutely not for some other.
Let's make an example to better explain what we are talking about:
If you run three shifts a day, you will need a machine with low and short maintenance time, single shaft shredder, while with one shift, and sometimes two, you can have some other, less expensive device, a granulator, that requires a little more maintenance but makes you to save money when buying the system.
Some materials may also need a pre-washing to save wearing to the rest of the system and to improve the quality of final product and is strictly connected to the way of cutting.
Here we'll consider the perfect washing line, meaning the best possible set up for an average dirty film with some different thickness for a final production of material good for blowing film again.
To achieve the result, scraps to start with shouldn't be much degraded but have good characteristics from chemical and physical point of view.
Another section is about separation of our cut film from contaminants; to do this we go into two different sink-float tanks and one stage of washing.
Washing of film, in fact, does not generally require much efforts because dirt stays on the surface and it's easy to remove.
Next step, drying, needs a lot more attention instead.
Like we said before, also here it's a matter of ratio between surface and weight; any mechanical dryer will deliver flakes with some moisture on the surface so if flake is tick and heavy the percentage of moisture is low while with thin film, that has the same quantity of moisture on the surface, the percent of humidity increases a lot.
So, let's go in details with machinery.
Material is normally coming in bales and, because no machine can accept the whole bale, it needs to be opened by some operators and doing this, why not, they can even check if something strange came together with scraps.
We will never be tired telling anything can be found into scraps, even "pre-sorted" so give it a look does not hurt and never will.
Material is therefore ready for cutting; we do suggest single shaft shredders, to get big size flakes, handling all the possible dirt coming without wearing and suffering very much for most of contaminants.
After cutting, flakes should go to a "buffer" silo that does nothing but holding flakes and release the right, steady quantity, to the rest of the line because washers, sink-float tank and all devices after this point will work much better if quantity of coming material is constant.
For the purpose of washing we use a "film washer", practically a modified spin dryer with water sprays together with high speed and friction to increase washing effect.
Flakes go into first sink-float tank where heavier that one materials will sink and olefins will float till the end of it where a waterfall system together with de-watering collects floating flakes and gets them to a final dryer.
A second washing and separation stage may be required, for higher quality products. .
Finally drying, by means of a spin dryer, will deliver clean and "dry" flakes to a storage bin for further using.
Now, "dry" means flakes with some moisture left and the quantity will be according to thickness, as we said before.
Last required step is filtering and pelletizing.
Please go to each section of the system for more detailed information and, for a deeper knowledge about film washing click HERE.
Thanks.