Tomra launches plastic flake sorting technology

Tomra Recycling Sorting, a business unit of Norway-based Tomra, has launched the Innosort Flake for high throughput purification of plastic flakes.

The Innosort Flake enables simultaneous flake sorting by color, polymer and transparency, the company says.

“The new Innosort Flake is designed to sort any color, any polymer, at the same time,” says Alberto Piovesan, global segment manager of plastics at Tomra Recycling Sorting. “It levels the playing field for recyclers and gives them maximum flexibility to respond to the respective market demands.”

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Using a near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer, Tomra says the machine detects various polymers, allowing for the recovery of recyclable materials from contaminated infeed, while giving access to more recycled materials that would be otherwise lost or downcycled for lower-grade applications.

According to Tomra, the Innosort Flake allows for shredded and washed mixed plastic fractions to be sorted into clean fractions of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene for extrusion and the creation of postconsumer recycled content.

Tomra says the machine’s enhanced optics and high contrast imaging can detect multiple colors and create single color fractions, as well as differentiate between white opaque, natural, transparent and translucent flakes.

“If an operator wants to purify PET this month and produce a clean blue PP next month, it is technically possible with the new machine,” Piovesan says.

The Innosort Flake has four chutes and a changeable illumination background, allowing it to run multiple sorting and recovery steps in a single machine.

“We developed the machine with the requirements of our customers in mind,” says William Zeng, product manager for Tomra Recycling Sorting. “With its integrated cooling system and robustness, it delivers an even more stable performance in challenging environments and delivers reliable results for maximum output and profitability.

“Furthermore, with the enhanced technologies, recyclers already achieve very high purity levels after the first sorting step. Depending on the contamination level of the input material and the target purities, fewer sorting steps might be required."

Tomra Insight, the company’s cloud-based data monitoring platform made to improve sorting performance, can be installed as a service on the machine. The platform’s real-time monitoring makes data accessible to plant operators, which Tomra says helps maintain process stability.