Brabender Technologie
A new twist on fiber feeding for recycling
Manufacturing carbon-fiber panels can generate a great deal of waste, which then requires disposal. Shredding these panels produces flakes and fibers that, when mixed together, make feeding extremely difficult. Most natural fibers have similar flow characteristics and difficulty feeding when used as a renewable raw material to reinforce plastics. Similar to carbon fibers, natural fibers mechanically interlock, often resulting in the formation of product bridges and starving of the feed screw. The new FiberXpert (photo) helps to solve this problem because it can feed a large range of long fibers. FiberXpert can be used with a wide range of very different materials, as it has many optional features. Other applications include the recycling of polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flakes or other shredded materials. Here, the intermediate recycling step of re-pelletizing can be eliminated if the flakes can be fed directly into the manufacturing process. Hall 4, Stand 237 — Brabender Technologie GmbH & Co. KG, Duisburg, Germany