In March, the Agilyx Chemical Recycling facility in Tigard, which was also the only public Styrofoam recycling station in the Portland area, suddenly closed.

But the following month, Green Century Recycling in Northwest Portland opened a collection point and provided Styrofoam recycling solution for a fee. It costs $10 to recycle a truckload of expanded polystyrene. Among them, the company received the most medical coolers, which accounted for about 20% of all Styrofoam received.

Ridwell, a household recycling collection service, also offers customers door-to-door pickup of foam plastics, which are then delivered to Green Century. Unlike Agilyx, which uses chemical methods to break down foam and convert it into fuel, Green Century uses a hydraulic compactor as a Styrofoam recycling solution.

The company uses a cold densification process, where a hydraulic compactor compresses foam at a ratio of 90:1. When a large piece of lightweight foam enters the foam compactor, it becomes a very heavy brick. These bricks will be transported to downstream factories, melted and cut into pellets, and finally dyed to become new plastic products, the most common of which are picture frames and frame strips.

Obviously, this foam recycling program achieves the reuse of existing resources. However, in the Styrofoam recycling solution, the most difficult problem is actually the transportation and warehousing of foam. Foam is a lightweight material with large volume and low weight. Direct transportation or warehousing is inefficient and expensive, and there is also a fire safety hazard.

The hydraulic compactor, which is a device specially used for reducing the volume of foam, perfectly solves the above problems and is an indispensable core equipment for Styrofoam recycling solution. Moreover, the machine combines the advantages and disadvantages of the cold-press compactor and hot melt machine on the market, and has very high material compatibility.

The core working principle of the foam compactor is the effect of the hydraulic system. By pushing the pressing plate through the high-pressure hydraulic cylinder, the machine exerts huge pressure on the material and compresses it into high-density foam blocks. This process expels the air in the foam material through physical squeezing, thereby greatly reducing its volume and forming uniform rectangular blocks.

Due to the physical compression, the foam compactor can handle water-containing foam, such as fish boxes, fruit and vegetable boxes, etc. Fish merchants generally use cold-press compactors to handle foam fish boxes, with a compression ratio of 50:1, while the ratio of hydraulic compactors is higher, reducing the transportation cost per ton.

Although the hot melt machine can achieve the best volume reduction effect, it mainly uses high-temperature hot melt technology and is not suitable for handling water-containing materials. In addition, European and some Asian countries do not like to use hot melt machines in Styrofoam recycling solution, and prefer to use hydraulic compactor or cold-press compactor.

If you want to know more about hydraulic compactor or parameter configuration, please leave your comments and email.