PARTICULAR COFFEE CAPSULES AND SUCHLIKE”

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FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention concerns a method and a plant to recycle used disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages, in particular coffee capsules and suchlike, which can be used to recover both the materials that make up the containers and also the used contents of the foodstuffs.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION For a long time, plants have been known which are used to process the used disposable containers of powdered foods with which instant beverages are produced.

These containers, as is known, are typically made in the form of capsules that have customized shapes and sizes and inside which the doses of the powdered foods are loaded. Once inserted into the appropriate automatic machines, they allow tiie instant preparation of ready-to- drink beverages, mixing the doses of food with a liquid, typically hot water.

After use, the used capsules are extracted from the machines and accumulated to be subsequently disposed of.

The disposal of the used capsules is a problem that is becoming increasingly important, given their widespread diffusion, and may depend on the materials of which they are made.

Typically, a capsule generally consists of a container body which is shaped like a little cup and has an aperture sealed by an aluminum foil to protect its contents.

To allow the creation of the instant drink, the aluminum foil is perforated with a special injector device with which the automatic machine is equipped, normally formed by several needles, axially hollow, which are connected to an injection pump and a tank of liquid, normally water, having electric resistances to heat it.

Some types of capsules are made with originally compostable materials and, in order to dispose of and recycle them, they usually require the used doses of food to be emptied, which are sent to the disposal of wet waste, and, subsequently, the container bodies are sent directly to subsequent composting sites, and, if required, they are also shredded into parts of selected sizes.

However, for economic reasons and because the food contents must not be altered, most of the capsules are made with heterogeneous materials assembled together, typically aluminum and/or aluminum and plastic materials, and this circumstance makes it considerably more complex to dispose of them.

Normally, to dispose of them the capsules have to be crushed after they have been emptied of their used food content and after they have been recovered as a material suitable for recycling in the production field, but no longer in the food sector, as it is material that haseben polluted t by is pre vious use.

Furthermore, this recovered material contains large residues of aluminum and plastic materials mixed together, and the separation of these two components is not an easy process.

In general, to comply with the regulations in the field of disposal, the used capsules that are not subjected to any previous preparation step can be sent for disposal as unsorted waste, without providing any recovery step, even only partial, of the component materials.

Alternatively, when even partial and simplified recycling of the materials is required, after having previously emptied the capsules of the used food component contained in them, the latter can be sent separately for disposal as wet waste while the solid part of the capsule, that is, the container body, can be sent to the specific disposal site reserved for plastic waste.

One of the disadvantages of the state of the art is that it is not normally possible to carry out the recovery in a single recycling plant, either of the used food component of the capsules, or of the part that forms the body of the capsule, further separating the materials of which it is made, that is, aluminum and plastic.

Another disadvantage of the state of the art is that in the disposal cycles of the container bodies of the capsules made of different plastic materials, it is not possible to separate the individual plastic materials from each other by dividing them according to type.

Another problem of the state of the art is that, in known plants for recycling capsules containing doses of used foods, it is necessary to control in a capillary manner the efficiency of the processing cycles of the used capsules, for example by verifying whether the recycled materials are actually separated from each other effectively, in order to prevent reciprocal pollution by residues deriving from each material.

There is therefore a need to perfect a method and a plant to recycle used disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages that can overcome the disadvantage of the state of the art as indicated above.

One purpose of the present invention is to provide a method and a plant to recycle used disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages which allow to recover both the used doses of food, and the capsules that contain them, and also to satisfactorily divide and select the materials that make up the capsules.

Another purpose of the present invention is to provide a method and a plant to recycle used disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages which are certainly effective, guaranteeing a very thorough separation of different materials, and which allow to accurately control the correct execution of the operating cycles, detecting the presence of any possible polluting residues deriving from use.

The Applicant has devised, tested and embodied the present invention to overcome the shortcomings of the state of the art and to obtain these and other purposes and advantages.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is set forth and characterized in the independent claims. The dependent claims describe other characteristics of the present invention or variants to the main inventive idea.

In accordance with the above purposes, a method to recycle used disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages comprises the steps of:

- crushing a mass of used disposable containers with crushing means which have a slow crushing cycle;

- separating used and wet foodstuffs from the mass obtaining a selected mass of crushed containers;

- sending the wet foodstuffs on at least a first processing line, wherein the first processing line comprises at least one drying station;

- sending the selected mass of crushed containers on at least a second processing line which comprises at least one station for selecting and separating non-ferrous conductive components from plastic components of the selected mass;

- separately collecting the non-ferrous conductive components and the plastic components;

- performing a screening operation, with screening means, in the first and second processing line.

In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a plant for recycling used disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages is characterized in that it comprises!

- at least one station for accumulating used disposable containers;

- at least one station for crushing the used containers equipped with crushing means with a slow crushing cycle;

- at least one station for selecting between used foodstuffs and plastic components;

- a first processing line derived from the selection station and equipped with:

- at least one station for drying the used foodstuffs;

- at least one separation station located downstream of the at least one drying station and intended to divide the used foodstuffs into at least a first food by- product destined for recycling as fertilizer and into a second food by-product destined for disposal;

- a second processing line derived from the selection station and comprising in succession:

- a station for separating non-ferrous conductive components from plastic components with electromagnetic means;

- a station for cleaning the non-ferrous conductive components and plastic components and for removing residues with streams of compressed air;

- a station for selecting the plastic components according to typologies of plastic polymers.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS These and other aspects, characteristics and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of some embodiments, given as a non-restrictive example with reference to the attached drawings wherein:

- fig. 1 is a schematic view, so-called flow map, of a plant for recycling disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages, according to the invention; - fig. 2 is a schematic and enlarged scale view of a station for removing aluminum from material obtained by grinding disposable containers;

- fig. 3 is a schematic and enlarged scale view of a station for selecting aluminum from plastic materials.

To facilitate comprehension, the same reference numbers have been used, where possible, to identify identical common elements in the drawings.

It is understood that elements and characteristics of one embodiment can conveniently be incorporated into other embodiments without further clarifications.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF SOME EMBODIMENTS

We will now refer in detail to the various embodiments of the invention, of which one or more examples are shown in the attached drawings.

Each example is supplied by way of illustration of the invention and shall not be understood as a limitation thereof.

For example, the characteristics shown or described insomuch as they are part of one embodiment can be adopted on, or in association with, other embodiments to produce another embodiment.

It is understood that the present invention shall include all such modifications and variants.

Before describing these embodiments, we must also clarify that the present description is not limited in its application to details of the construction and disposition of the components as described in the following description using the attached drawings.

The present description can provide other embodiments and can be obtained or executed in various other ways.

We must also clarify that the phraseology and terminology used here is for the purposes of description only, and cannot be considered as limitative.

Some embodiments described using the attached drawings concern a plant for recycling disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages, indicated as a whole with reference number 1 in the attached drawings.

The plant 1 comprises a first station for collecting used capsules, indicated as a whole with 2, in which a crushing apparatus is disposed, in this specific case a hammer mill 3 with a slow shredding cycle. By slow shredding cycle we mean, by way of example, a peripheral speed of about 40 m/s. A screening grid associated with the hammer mill 3 has a screening size comprised between about 20x20 mm and 30x30 mm.

Other types of shredders can also be used instead of the hammer mill, for example a single-rotor with blades with a grid.

The mill 3 is fed by a transporter unit 4, and in turn unloads the crushed capsules, together with their wet content of used foodstuffs, onto another transporter unit 5 downstream of which there is disposed a screening station 6.

The screening station 6 is equipped with vibrating screens to screen the crushed material, together with the wet content, according to sizes of the latter, and to send the wet component to a drying station 7, equipped with a drying oven 23, by means of a first processing line 8, and the plastic component to a station 9 for removing aluminum, or non-metallic conductive components, by means of a second processing line 12.

The screening net of the vibrating screens of the screening station 6 has, preferably, a size comprised between about 5 mm and 10 mm.

Downstream of the drying station 7 there is provided a separation station 10 in which the used foodstuffs are divided into at least a first food by-product 11 A destined for recycling as fertilizer and a second food by-product 1 IB destined for disposal.

The second processing line 12 is structured so as to divide the plastic components and the non-metallic conductive materials according to the size into which they have been crushed by the hammer mill 3 and by the screening station

6.

Specifically, a line 12A transports the materials that have a size smaller than or equal to 10mm, and a line 12B transports the materials that have a size equal to or greater than 10mm.

With reference to fig. 2, it can be observed in enlarged detail that the station 9 for removing aluminum is structured in such a way as to separate from each other, as well as the materials according to their size, also the aluminum which is transported on a transport line 12C of its own

The separation between plastic materials and aluminum occurs by means of a machine 24 equipped with a system with eddy currents, or Foucault currents, which generate magnetic fields able to carry out the separation of the aluminum from the plastic materials by means of magnetic repulsion.

In the plant 1, the transport line 12B carries the materials that have a size equal to or greater than 10mm to a station 13 for eliminating paper residues by means of an air separator device 25, at the exit of which the material, form which the paper residues have been removed, is sent to a subsequent cleaning station 14 to clean the plastic components from the non-ferrous conductive components.

The transport lines 12A and 12C also converge into this station 14, and the separation between clean aluminum and plastic materials takes place inside it, as shown in fig. 3, which are in turn selected according to their sizes.

The separation of the aluminum takes place by means of an inductive bar device 14B cooperating with an NIR (Near Infra-Red) video camera indicated with 14A.

In particular, the NIR video camera 14A identifies the plastic component while the inductive bar 14B identifies the aluminum component, thus obtaining the separation between aluminum and plastic.

In the station 14 there is provided a compressed air removal and expulsion device 26 which, on the basis of the information provided by the video camera 14A, removes the residual plastic from the aluminum.

At exit from the station 14, the separated aluminum is collected in storage containers 15, while the mixtures of materials that may have remained coupled are collected in other storage containers 16, as well as any aluminum residues separated from the flow of plastic and plastics separated from the flow of aluminum.

At the same time, the two transport lines 12A and 12B take the plastic materials to a separation station 17 equipped with a separator machine 17A, which proceeds to separate them according to their type and to collect them in respective storage containers 18, 19, 20.

The separator machine 17A also uses an optical separator, for example again of the NIR video camera type 17B, to separate the plastic material based on the type of polymer.

The plant 1 for recycling used disposable containers of foodstuffs, and the corresponding recycling method, therefore allow to obtain recyclable and reusable plastic materials, processing them inside a single plant.

It is clear that modifications and/or additions of parts may be made to the method and to the plant for recycling used disposable containers of foodstuffs for instant beverages as described heretofore, without departing from the field and scope of the present invention as defined by the claims.

Furthermore, any shapes and sizes whatsoever are possible, according to requirements, without departing from the field and scope of protection of the following claims.

In the following claims, the sole purpose of the references in brackets is to facilitate reading: they must not be considered as restrictive factors with regard to the field of protection claimed in the specific claims.