Milliken, EREMA & PreZero to showcase new technology

At the upcoming K 2022 event, Milliken & Company, a diversified global manufacturer with more than 70 locations worldwide, will collaborate with European recycling pioneers PreZero and EREMA to demonstrate the application of their Hyperform® HPN® performance additives in recycled polypropylene (rPP) compounds.

The Austrian manufacturer of recycling equipment EREMA will exhibit all of its technology at the trade show in Düsseldorf from October 19–26. It will run in the EREMA Circonomic Centre in the fairgrounds’ outdoor area (OA/-CE03) and offer a real-time recycling demonstration using recycled materials provided by PreZero, a German environmental services company (Hall 8B/A57).

The partners will use post-consumer waste that PreZero has gathered for the live recycling demonstration. The recycled PP resins are then created by PreZero using its formulation expertise, EREMA recycling technology, and Milliken’s Hyperform HPN additive, in a prime example of real value-chain collaboration. PreZero can produce odor-optimized premium rPP pellets directly from polluted post-consumer material thanks to EREMA’s mechanical innovation.

By improving the material’s physical characteristics and lowering the processing cycle time, Hyperform HPN enhances recycled PP. Additionally, during the post-injection molding period, these additives offer improved dimensional control and crystallization stability.

The performance of rPP approaches that of virgin PP thanks to the effective usage of their HPN nucleating agent. PreZero likes to boast that through its recycling efforts, it “gives garbage and seemingly worthless things a new life.”

Wim van De Velde, worldwide vice president of plastic additives at Milliken, said that popular Hyperform HPN performance additives from Milliken help produce PP faster, more smoothly, and with demonstrable energy savings. UL Environment & Sustainability, a division of the global UL group, reviewed and certified that Hyperform HPN allowed an average of 5-8% energy savings for enterprises that injection mold thin-wall PP products. Users may produce stronger, lighter items while lowering prices, cutting carbon emissions[1,], and advancing circularity thanks to this. They also facilitate bigger greater use of rPP in an increased number of applications.

The revolutionary INTAREMA® TVEplus® RegrindPro® extruder machine with ReFresher technology, which EREMA will use at the K show, sets new benchmarks in the recycling of materials that are challenging to handle, such as thickly printed films and particularly moist materials. This is made possible by performing high-performance degassing, complete melt homogenization, and ultrafine filtration all in one phase. Melt filtering occurs before extruder degassing, which is the foundational idea behind TVEplus technology.

Michael Heitzinger, Managing Director of EREMA Engineering Recycling Maschinen und Anlagen GmbH, explains that the effective coupling of our ReFresher technology with this tried-and-true extruder system makes it possible to achieve odor-optimized premium recycled pellets directly from contaminated post-consumer material. Recycled plastics now have access to a whole new range of applications thanks to the incomparable combination of top pellet quality and odor reduction.