Successful introduction of MRS at 5th Recycled Polyester Forum-Texglobe

The year of economical downturn provided to everybody in our industry cost cuttings and income losses. So the question seemed to be likely ??Will a polyester recycling conference in China become a success or will the downturn shoo away our conference participants??? The reality was a positive surprise.

Different to a wide spread mood of crisis in the Western civilization during the past year our Chinese partners and the conference participants from Chinese polyester industry propagated cautious optimism. Of cause the conference did not grow like observed during the first four years but with a total number of attendees and speakers of about 190 the conference met the level of attention we have had during the past. Very positive also the move from Hangzhou to Shanghai where the conference host CCFEI traced with the Minya Hotel located in Pudong a convenient and well equipped venue and no to forget the perfect conference organization of CCFEI.

Event: 5th China International Recycled Polyester Forum
Date: September 02.-04.2009

The speakers of this year off cause reported about the impact of crisis to the Chinese polyester and recycling industry. Mr. Lin Shidong, Secretary General of CCFA Recycled Fiber Commission with his contribution ??Strategies of CCFA Recycled Fiber Commission in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Turmoil?? provided a deep insight to the shape and performance of Chinese polyester recycling industry concentration this year to standardization, innovation, cooperation and development. With his economical figures, flake price and fiber price developments he showed very clear the large difficulties the Chinese companies are faced currently. Together with economical figures Li Shidong gave a summary of necessary activities for the time after the crisis. To all those who are involved in export/import plastic waste the presentation Mr Zhou Bingyan gave a detailed information about existing regulations and upcoming developments.

A Global Overview of Post Consumer PET Recycling Technologies and Regulations for Food Contact Applications was presented by Dr. Forrest L. Bayer, Director Packaging, Scientific and Regulatory Affairs, The Coca- Cola Company. In depth and detail Coca Cola provided its few about latest developments in PET bottle recycling with the main topics (1) Sustainability(2) Collection(3) Bottle to bottle/ food contact technologies(4) Advances in sortation (5) Global regulatory status Interesting to see was that after years of stagnation the United States are starting again to increase the PET bottle collection significantly as it is to see at the picture beneath. Another point of attention was the latest flake sorting technology based on ultra high speed laser spectroscopy of UNISENSOR which allows reducing foreign substances highly efficient.

Lu Yongfu, President, Hangzhou Hanbang Chemical Fibre Co., Ltd. Concentrated his presentation to the topic ??How To Achieve Upgrading of Recycling Industry through Market Specialization??. To help the recycled fiber industry recognizing its currently poor environment Lu Yongfu focused on a straight agenda from energy supply to tax policy impacts. Sun Ya, Vice President, Cixi Jiangnan Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd. provided a review and prospect on export-oriented development of recycled polyester staple enterprises??. He lined out that the total annual capacity of recycled polyester staple increased dramatically from 1.2 million tons in 2002 to 3.5 million tons in 2005 with nearly 220 enterprises involved, and further augmented to 5.5 million tons by end 2008 with nearly 300 enterprises involved.

Ulrich Thiele, President, Dr. Thiele Polyester Technology went to some recycling process details and reported about chemical polyester recycling and its challenges and hurdles to enter industrial scale. Some of the final conclusions are. His main conclusions are process technologies of chemical recycling by glycolysis, hydrolysis or methanolysis are available and lower entrance barrier for chemical polyester recycling are having those polyester producing companies which are still possessing at site DMT/PTA production which is enabling the joint use of the existing equipment, technology and know how for chemical polyester recycling.

Xu Jian, Gneuss Shangha, Gneuß Kunststofftechnik GmbH reported about devolatilizing and filtration as key factors in the production of PET fibres. After five years of development and a successful introduction to the industry the new MRS devolatization and extrusion technology is available for a broad range of applications. Especially for fiber production the MRS provides highest degassing efficiency available in the market at moderate vacuum >25 mbar required which is efficient for most applications. Karlheinz Herbold, President, Herbold Meckesheim GmbH presented the latest design of Herbold PET bottle washing lines as state of the art in this technology. The modular design of the Herbold washing lines allows customers to start with basic process steps or to add these steps or components to existing lines.

Wang Biao, OHL Beijing Representative Office reported about Advantages of OHL batch process in ??Bottle To Bottle?? recycling. One major advantage of the OHL technology is the high flexible SSP which allows to produce at one and the same line pellets of lower IV in a range of 0,75 ?? 0,78 dl/g, in medium IV in a range of 0,80 ?? 0,84 dl/g and in high IV in a range of 0,90 ?? 0,95 dl/g.

Andreas Christel, Product Manager Thermal Processes, Buhler AG presented the latest technology features of Buhler`s solid state polycondensation for PET bottle recycling. Especially to produce food grade PET flakes at lower and medium capacity in a range of 5 000 ?? 20 000 t/a the so called ??SSP leaN?? which is providing an IV increase between 0,1 and 0,2 dl/g (optional 0,3 dl/g) provides an efficient solution for PET recycling. One outstanding highlight of the conference was provided by Andrew Noone,Managing Director, PCI PET Packaging, Resin & Recycling Ltd with his speech about the global trends in PET bottle recovery and reuse. Especially the compressed overview about the bottle collection around the world and in China and the expected market development has been presented in instructive graphics.