K 2013: Erema launches new plastic recycling machine

On its stand at K 2013 Erema has officially unveiled its latest machine for plastics recycling, the ‘Intarema’.

The machine is based on newly developed and patented ‘Counter Current’ technology, which is said to result in increased productivity, flexibility, easy operation and “considerably lower” energy consumption.

Erema says the innovation in the Counter Current system is in the cutter/compactor and tangentially connected extruder, where it circulates material against the normal direction of the extruder, resulting in more material being processed in a shorter time.

Erema says to date, the worldwide technical standard has been a system in which the material in the cutter/compactor moved in the direction of the extruder. The centrifugal forces arising in the process were used for the feeding of the extruder and the treated, warm material was "packed" into the extruder screw. It says the inverse tangential configuration of the Counter Current system now ensures that the extruder screw is filled virtually pressure-free with the preheated material.

Michael Heitzinger, CTO at Erema, described the impact which the new system has on productivity and the quality of the recyclate, saying: "The screw basically "takes what it needs", the extruder always has the ideal filling level and is never overfilled, which makes it much better to regulate."