Dr. Thiele: 8th China International Recycled Polyester Forum

Different to the past seven meetings the 8th China International Recycled Polyester Forum combined the conference with an exhibition round the polyester recycling industry. According to the organizer the attraction of this event was expressed by over 300 conference participants from China and fifteen international nations. The conference contributions presented a well selected mélange about the general industry and market development of polyester recycling, the impact of new governmental rules and a survey about the technological status of polyester recycling.

Some selected highlights from the conference program
Zhao Xiangdong, Vice Chairman of CCFA provided a deep and circumventive summary about the current situation of PET recycling industry in China. The tenor of his speech described the difficult concurrence of annual capacity growth to meanwhile 8 million tons R-filament and R-fiber, the low utilization rate of 70% connected with drop of margins and the impact of financial crisis in Europe and USA.

Shi Jianping, President of Cixi Huashun Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd. concentrated his contribution to evolution and application of recycled filaments like R-POY, R-FDY, R-DTY, R-BCF and R-technical-filaments. China meanwhile has an R-filament production capacity of about 1 million t/a. Was the main target up to now to compete with the price advantage processing low price raw materials the future development will be concentrated on quality improvements, new and unique applications and special brands. Shi also demonstrated the worse impact of the current financial crisis to the R-PFY price situation in 2012.

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The interest in environmental friendly fiber applications was lined out by Wang Baoying, Environment Safety Manager of Nike China. Similar to other large brand owners Nike is aiming for a significant increased use of materials based on recycling in their product portfolio.

Cheng Qian, General Manager of Yangzhou Zhicheng Chemical Technology Ltd. introduced as technical innovation their new chemical polyester recycling process. The technology allows the selective breakdown of PET, purification by filtration and subsequent re-polycondensation. Advantages are the improved melt homogeneity and purity combined with high capacity up to 120 t/day.

S+S Separation and Sorting Technology GmbH and TITECH China (part of Tomra) as the leading companies in sorting technology provided an update about their latest features in bottle and flake sorting. Increasing production expense and steady demand for higher product quality vindicate the increasing use of automatic sorting technology.

Ralf Altepeter of Gneuss Kunststofftechnik GmbH demonstrated the advantages of their MRS-recycling system existing of vacuum extrusion, melt filtration and viscosity control by means of practical experiences.

Andreas Christel, Director Process Technology of Buehler went in Buehler´s recent scale development of bottle-to-bottle technology concluding in their readiness to provide B-2-B technology with capacity up to 100 t/d.

A new chemical approach how to remove toxic impurities from bottle flakes was introduced by Girish Bhatt of Bepex International Ltd. Core of the new process is the application of exactly dosed MEG-vapor as purification carrier.

The complete preprints of the conference are available as CD on demand under the addresses justin@cnfiber.com and drthiele@polyester-technology.com.

Dr. Thiele Polyester Technology, Bruchköbel, Germany

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