Anti-foam for Plastic recycling

Anti-foam for plastic recycling

When rinsing and separating plastics (e.g. PE/PP, PET, HDPE & LDPE) often foaming takes place. This can be disturbing the production process and lead to safety issues. A vital solution for your process is the correct anti-foam or defoamer. But what is the right one and how can you find the correct volumes to be dosed? Below we share more information regarding anti-foam for plastic recycling.

Recycling plastic waste

Recycling plastic waste is a very important process for our society in order to achieve a sustainable and circular economy. We all benefit from using the maximum capacity of the production process. PET is one of the plastics that is 100% recyclable.

The benefits of anti-foams

Anti-foams can help you to keep control over your processes. It can prevent hazardous situations in production areas and no limits in capacity due to too much foam.

Though on both regulatory and operational level there are some items to take into consideration. Such as food safety when your end customers start using your recycled plastic for food packaging again. And what about the anti-foam environmental impact or into the water purification process itself? Check these parameters beforehand in order to avoid possible negative effects.

Foam & anti-foam reduction in the plastic recycling process

From our experience, some recyclers are using way too much anti-foam. Resulting in extreme volumes. In some cases this is due to settings or adding it manually. Or because of the ineffectiveness of the product. Depending on the type of plastic waste, there can be many fluctuations in the built up of foam. There isn’t often time to take the whole picture into consideration. And therefore, pumps are simply set to the maximum. Or people are using too much anti-foam by manually overdosing the product. The good news is that there are solutions for this challenge of plastic foam reduction.

What additives are used?

There are many types of anti-foams for plastic recycling. Silicone or organic based, high cost or low priced, etc. At Van Meeuwen we like to look into your situation and find the fitting product. Often, we can test 2 or 3 suitable anti-foam products for plastic waste – may the best win!

How does an anti-foam work?

Foaming is caused by the combination of foaming media and air in all kinds of (production) processes. The ideal combination of certain ingredients in anti-foams ensure an excellent reduction of the surface tension and break the entire foam layer. Depending on the process and type of foam, we can look for solutions to spray onto the processing water, or bringing the anti-foam into the water.

How can we help?

Van Meeuwen would like to help you keeping your foam under control. Different dosing? Other additives? Let’s work together to find out where improvements can be made. We develop and supply our anti-foam products by working closely with European partners. Please call us: +31 (0) 294 494 460 and of course you can also send an email.