We have broadly classified our solutions into three categories: tool coatings, component and materials business and equipment business. The flowcharts below depict the process and criteria we have defined to enable us to determine which of our solutions are to be classified as sustainable.
r-PET - recycled polyethylene terephthalate - is gaining importance as the environmentally friendly solution in the production of manmade fibers, as it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 79% when compared with virgin PET.
Oerlikon Barmag is offering technological solutions for rPET that enable customers to save 3.5 million tons of CO2 per year. In 2022, Oerlikon Barmag introduced, a homogenizer recycling line specifically for customers in China and Asia where bottle flakes and film waste can be agglomerated, extruded, homogenized and melted to produce polymer melt or chips. It enables the polymer quality of recycled bottles or film waste to be precisely adjusted to the requirements of different downstream extrusion or injection molding processes.
Another rPET solution is the VacuFil system from the Oerlikon Barmag joint venture, BBEngineering. VacuFil is a unique and innovative PET recycling line, uniting gentle large-scale filtration and targeted intrinsic viscoscity (IV) regulation for consistently outstanding rPET melt quality.
In 2022, BB Engineering launched a patented key component of the VacuFil system, the Visco+ filter as a separate and easily integrable upgrade component that enables precise IV setting and pure melt with the help of vacuum. IV is the central quality characteristic in PET recycling and rPET processing. It determines the melting performance in the production process and the properties of the end products and is thus essential in the recycling process. The Visco+ process is reliable, verifiable and 50% faster than conventional liquid-state polycondensation systems.
