Spittal/Drau (Austria), June 2022. This year, Austrian recycling pioneer Lindner is highlighting once more the importance of the circular economy. For many decades, Lindner has developed, produced and installed countless shredders and system solutions – both mobile and stationary – to efficiently process various waste streams. Now more than ever, the focus is on energy efficiency, productivity and the economically viable transformation of the old into new – and this includes plastics, as well as waste wood recycling, and the production of high-calorific solid recovered fuels. The innovative technology for this is developed in-house, by Lindner’s R&D team with its decades of experience, yet Lindner’s customers also benefit from its many cooperative research projects. One of these is the lead project, circPLAST-mr, carried out together with universities and other industry leaders to find new mechanical recycling solutions.
Be A Waste Transformer
This is Lindner's call, but also its promise to the entire waste and recycling industry at the IFAT 2022. In recent years, recycling has become increasingly important, both socially and politically. The EU's Green Deal, specifying recycling quotas, and the drive to keep secondary raw materials in the cycle for as long as possible are shaping the waste management industry just as much as the shortage of skilled workers, rising energy costs, and the demand for higher productivity – challenges that Lindner’s team is tackling head on. Dedicated to recycling, Lindner not only offers individual but also comprehensive system solutions, which make it possible to separate potential raw materials as efficiently as possible from various waste streams, such as municipal, commercial or industrial waste. At the same time, and with additional quality monitoring, non-recyclable material is transformed into another valuable resource in the secondary shredding process: medium and high-calorific SRF.
From Waste Disposal to Resource Recovery
Thanks to the many waste processing options, it's easy to transform waste collectors into resource recoverers. The more potential raw materials can be extracted from the material flow, the better the economic balance. Especially with regard to the recovered plastics, more and more waste processors are recognising the additional value that can be created. Together with its subsidiary Lindner Washtech, Lindner has been operating successfully in this segment worldwide for many years. The cornerstone for successful plastics rests primarily on the perfect coordination of four process steps: shredding, sorting, washing and drying. In this way, it is possible to install comprehensive facilities – to date, more than 200 plastics recycling facilities have been put into operation – to recycle various plastics such as PE-LLD films, PE-HD bottles, PP consumer goods and PET bottles. Not only have numerous international companies chosen Lindner's processing lines but so did the NTCP (National Test Centre Circular Plastics), Europe's first independent research centre. More info here.
circPLAST-mr - Lead Project for Mechanical Plastics Recycling
Managed by the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, eleven scientific and fourteen well-known company partners, most of them market leaders in their segment, including Lindner, are working on how to obtain high-quality recyclates from waste plastics. For the first time, experts from all areas of plastics recycling have been brought together to make the best possible use of possible synergies. In total, the research program is divided into seven work packages (WP): Material flow preparation I (collection and pre-sorting), material flow preparation II (shredding, sorting, washing), data management & digitalisation and LCA-oriented process design. Lindner has taken the industrial lead in the material flow processing work package and is sitting sitting around the table with Alpla, the world market leader for plastic packaging, to discuss and develop better ways to sort and clean packaging. The latest technological innovations are used here, which are not yet available on the market.
In the project, researchers are investigating tasks such as the influence that processing quality has on sorting quality and which technologies are most effective for this — single or twin-shaft shredders — as well as how the shredder needs to communicate with the sorting unit. These and other questions, from shredding to washing and drying, are being researched in several test series, further expanding the knowledge in each of these segments and better coordinating all interfaces. This should enable significant optimisation of plastics recycling and help Lindner tailor its solutions to market and customer needs.
