PLA/bioplastic recycling

The 120% sustainable NaKu PLA/bioplastic bottle

Today we are at NGR - Next Generation Recycling. That's the recycling machine specialist and today we're going to see how the 120% sustainable NaKu bottle gets that 20% from recycled material. Come with us see the recycling process of PLA/bioplastic!

Today we are at NGR Next Generation Recycling. This is the specialist for recycling machines and today we will see how the 120% sustainable Naku bottle will get that 20% of recycled material. Come on and let's see!

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We are here at NGR, our recycling specialist and cooperation partner in the 120% sustainable Naku bottle project. Thank you for letting us be here today. Who are you, who is NGR, what do you do? My name is Peter Hierzenberger. I'm in NGR's lab, analyzing all kinds of plastics. NGR itself builds plastic recycling machines. So there are many different input and output materials to check, the quality before and after the process in our machines. What is so special about the recycling of Naku bottles? Naku bottles are made from PLA, a biopolymer. A lot of scientific work has already been done on PLA, but it hasn't gotten that far into the industry yet. So it's still a bit new for us and very exciting for us to examine this material together with NaKu to see how it behaves on our machines, what the quality is like before and after processing and what's out of ours recycled pellets can be made.

We are here at NGR our recycling specialist and cooperation partner in the project of this of the 120% sustainable Naku bottle. Many thanks for hosting us here. Who are you, who is NGR, what are you doing? My name is Peter Hierzenberger. I'm in the laboratory of NGR and I'm characterizing all kind of plastics. NGR itself is building plastic recycling machines. So there is a lot of different input material and output material to check, the quality before and after the process in our machines. What is now special about recycling Naku bottles? Naku bottles are made from PLA which is a biopolymer. There has been a lot of scientific work on PLA already but it is not already arrived in industry that much. So it's still a little bit new to us and for us it's very exciting to investigate this material together with NaKu to check how it behaves on our machines, how is the quality before and after processing and what can be made out of the pellets we recycled .

For our 120 percent sustainable NaKu bottle, we have two options for recycling. We have physical recycling or chemical recycling. Here you can see the physical recycling. Physical recycling means that we take the bottles, clean them, shred them into pieces, into flakes. Then the flakes are melted back into pellets and we can use the pellets to make our new bottles. The second option would be chemical recycling. In chemical recycling, we take the bottle material, we break it down into the chemical components that make it up, we repolymerize it and then we have new raw material to make our bottles. NaKu's vision is not just to have 120 percent, we want to have two hundred percent. One hundred percent renewable and one hundred percent recycled.

For our 120 percent sustainable NaKu bottle we have two options to make the recycling. We have the physical recycling or the chemical recycling. Here you can see the physical recycling. Physical recycling means we are taking the bottles, they are cleaned, they are threaded into pieces, into flakes. Then the flakes are re-melted to pellets and with the pellets we can make our new bottles from. The second option would be chemical recycling. With chemical recycling we are taking the bottle material, we are breaking it down to its chemical substances where it came from, we are re-polymerizing it and then we have new raw material to make our bottles. Of course if we have this two cycles the far vision that we have is not only to have a hundred twenty percent we want to have two hundred percent. Hundred percent regrowable and hundred percent recycled.

Here we are at our recycling machine. It has a capacity of about half a tonne per hour and here we see the renewable NaKu bottle being recycled. First it goes up the conveyor to the shredder where it falls into the shredder. Then it is crushed into flakes and the flakes fall into the extruder where they are heated and melted.

Here we are at our recycling machine. It has a capacity of about half a ton per hour and here we will see how the NaKu regrowable bottle will be recycled. First it is going up the conveyor belt up to the shredder where it's falling into the shredder. Then it will be shredded into flakes and the flakes will fall into the extruder where they are heated up and melted.

Here in this housing we have the extruder and inside the extruder is now the melted bottle material. We have two stations to ensure there are no other substances in the bottle material. The first is the vacuum where we have filtered out all liquid substances and then the melt goes on to this filter and this filter removes all unmelted particles. We have the filter here. Now the material has passed all the purification steps and comes out here. Normally we can't see this when the machine is running because it's separated now, but in the running process the two parts are closed. The hot clean melt comes out here, it's cut. We have water in the housing and the water pushes the pellets out here. Here they are separated by centrifugation, in the process the water and pellets are separated and this is where the bioplastic pellets come out. We now have 100% recycled PLA material. Here comes the XNUMX% recycled PLA NaKu bottle material, ready to become a new bioplastic NaKu bottle.

Here in this casing we have the extruder and inside of the extruder is now the melted bottle material. We have two stations to be sure that there are no other substances in the bottle material. The first is the vaccum where we have vaccum tiering all old liquid substances and then melt goes going forward to this filter and the filter is taking out all not melted particles. We have here the filter. Now the material has passed all cleaning step and it will come out out here. Normally we cannot see this here when the machine is running because now it's separated but in running process they are together. The hot clean melt is coming out here, it is cut. We have water inside and the water takes the pellets out here. Here they are separated via centrifugation where water and pellets are separated and pellets are coming out here and here we have hundred percent recycled pla material. Here the 100 recycled NaKu bottle material is coming out ready to be a new bottle.