GREENMAX Designs a Customized Solution to Help KANEKA Recycle EPO Foam - Foam Densifier

GREENMAX has cooperated with KANEKA, a well-known Asian company. KANEKA is a Japanese international chemical manufacturing company located in Osaka. Founded in 1949, the company produces chemical products such as functional resins, foam resins, and synthetic fibers. In addition to Japanese employees, there are 4,000 employees in Europe, Asia, and the United States. As one of the three giants of foam molding products in Japan, it mainly produces EPP EPE EPS raw materials and foam molding products.

Among them, the sub-factory in Kanto specializes in the production of EPO moldings for automotive parts. EPO (expandable polyethylene, styrene polymer) is a foamable copolymer of 70% PS foam and 30% PE foam. It uses the same blowing agent as EPS foam, generally isopentane, which has very good cushioning performance. The EPO foam is used for vehicle parts, OA machine cushioning materials, etc., and are supplied to automobile factories in Japan such as Toyota, Subaru, Suzuki, Honda, and Mazda, with an annual output of 1,800 tons. After the molded products are made, through manual inspection, the rate of defective products is about 2.5%, about 4 tons of discarded materials per month, and the defective products are placed in the recycling plant inside the factory for hot-melt treatment to make cakes and sold to Japanese domestic trading company.

KANEKA's recycling plant has 3 Japanese foam densifiers to help foam recycling. The service life is 15 years. One of them can no longer be traced back to the manufacturer and cannot be repaired, so it needs to be replaced. Therefore, the person in charge of the factory found the website of GREENMAX through online search, and expressed his hope to know the detailed information and quotation of the foam densifier. After receiving the consultation from KANEKA, we quickly got in touch with the person in charge and learned that the most difficult thing for them to deal with was EPO foam with 5 times and 10 times expansion ratio. The requirements are relatively high and special customization is required. In addition, in order to help customers choose the most suitable foam densifier, we require the project leader to mail the materials to be processed to GREENMAX Plant and conduct repeated trials to observe the effect of foam recycling.

GREENMAX engineer suggested using a foam densifier for foam recycling, the equipment model is foam densifier M-C200. The customization part includes the solution of using double crushing and using frequency converter to adjust the screw conveying speed, and provides the corresponding scheme and drawings. After the person in charge of the KANEKA factory collected all the information, it was submitted to the headquarters for discussion.

Four months later, KANEKA headquarters approved the application for replacing the foam densifiers. Three months after placing the order, KANEKA received the equipment. I was very surprised by the foam recycling ability of this equipment, and recommended GREENMAX to other sub-factories. We look forward to GREENMAX being able to provide more customized solutions for special materials, and to do our part for the recycling of foam materials.


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