Plastic Component Separator
Mission Statement
The Plastic Component Separator aims to make the plastic bottle recycling more efficient. A standard plastic bottle is made up of two plastic types: Plastic #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and Plastic #5 polypropylene (PP). The former makes up the bottle itself and the latter makes up the bottle cap and the safety ring underneath the cap. The two most common ways to recycle plastics is to shred them or melt them into pellets before remolding the plastic. These processes must be done with one single plastic type at a time, meaning at some point throughout the recycling process the two plastic types must be separated. To assure the plastic types are separated the recycling plants must incorporate extra processes into their systems which requires additional resources, time, energy and finances. We feel that is highly unnecessary.
Our design is a modification on reverse vending machines (RVMs). These machines are most commonly found towards the front of supermarkets and other stores. Customers return their empty bottles and cans and receive a voucher for money off their next purchase. Normally all these machines do is hold the bottle to be picked up and sent to a recycling plant. We would modify these machines with a flywheel and a rotary blade cutting system to remove the cap and ring respectively. Additionally we would install a system of worm gears which allow us both rotate the bottle for identification and move it forward and backward for accurate placement during operation. The specific module shown on the website is a modification of the Tomra T9 RVM pictured to the right. This particular model accepts glass bottles and can as well as plastic bottles. Therefore our modification allows for non-plastic bottles to pass through the system like normal .
