KraussMaffei Berstorff and Greiner Extrusion supply plants for window-profile production

At the beginning of the year, the first at Kappes Environment Technology (KET) manufacturing plant was finished in Bengbu (in the Anhui province, China). KraussMaffei Berstorff and Greiner Extrusion are providing the equipment for production of a new, environmentally friendly window generation. The final start of production is planned for August 2014. The windows – made from a composite containing wood-fiber and HDPE recycled material – will be marketed in China under the brand name ECOLIFE.

The raw material – containing up to 50% wood-fibre, various additives and a PO recycled material which has partly been extracted from household waste, such as shampoo bottles – will be mixed on a modular compounding plant with the ZE 130 R twin-screw extruder. "Our modular plants have the big advantage that they are integrated into functional individual packages that only need to be connected to the mains, water supply and compressed air on site," explains Ralf J. Dahl, Head of the Twin-Screw Extruder Product Group at KraussMaffei Berstorff in Hanover. "However, for this project, we had two challenges to overcome; firstly, the plant is designed for an extremely high throughput of over 1500 kg/h, and secondly, it has been designed to be more compact as we had to take the limited ceiling height into account," explains Dahl further.

The fully automated modular plant encompasses the entire process from raw-material tasks through to bagging the finished compound. Using gravimetric metering appliances, the extruder is coated with thermoplastics and additives, which must be melted on the front part of the 50-D-long processing unit. A side feeder meters the wood flour that is not pre-dried. Two degassing units extract the humidity that can reach up to 12%. Together with the atmospheric degassing, a water ring pump ensures that high steam levels are dissipated. Combined with the high level of free screw volume, the 6-D-long venting port with special WPC inserts ensure the humidity is removed efficiently and reliably.

 In a further processing step, the manufactured window profile is encased in a thin layer of aluminum on the inside and outside, which makes the window resistant to extreme weather conditions.

Since it was founded in 2007, KET – a German-Chinese start-up company – has focused on developing and manufacturing an environmentally friendly and resource-conserving generation of windows. The first patent was awarded in China in 2008. Using its modern, long-lasting, good-value and energy-saving system – both in terms of manufacture and use – the company first wants to open up the Chinese window market. Additional manufacturing plants near Beijing, Shenyang and Chengdu are already being planned. After successfully launching on the Chinese market, KET is already aiming to expand into the global window market. This start-up company's intentions have been further buoyed when it won an award at the GreenTec Awards (Europe's largest environmental awards) on May 5, and was awarded second place at the WPC Innovation Awards.