Nearing completion at South Korean Lotte Chemical UK’s Wilton site is a 200,000-tonne PET resin plant that includes a 25-tonne/hour filtration and pelletising system now being commissioned by Nordson BKG. The new plant, adjacent to Lotte’s existing PET facility, is due for start-up later this year.

The £60-million project will more than double the capacity for PET at the Wilton site. At its heart is the BKG CrystallCut system, which is said to save energy by re-using the heat from the polymer melt in the pelletising step to crystallise the pellets at a later stage in an integrated process. Also supplied by BKG is a screen changer in Nordson Kreyenborg’s POLY series.

The patented CrystallCut system is an integrated network that incorporates underwater pelletising, drying, and crystallising. After the polymer has been cut at the pelletiser die face, it is transported to a centrifugal pellet dryer where the water is separated and the polymer dried. The material exits the pellet dryer and is discharged on a specially designed centrifugal dryer outlet hopper where the conversion from amorphous to crystallised material occurs. Throughout this process there is precise control of material temperatures, preventing production and quality problems caused by insufficient crystallisation and excess levels of amorphous material.

Nordson BKG operates a trial facility at its Muenster, Germany, headquarters.

PET/PFA producer Lotte Chemical is a wholly owned subsidiary of KP Chemical of Korea and a part of the Lotte group of companies. Also located at the Wilton site is an existing 150 kilotonnes/year PET plant (M5) that came online in Q3/4 2013. The addition of the new line above will underpin the capacity of the co-located T8 PTA Plant and facilitate Lotte’s move into a wider range of PET products including resins incorporating post consumer recycled PET.