A system and method for freezing and breaking down tires or other materials is disclosed. The system and method for freezing and breaking down tires includes using a shredder to shred the tires, using a filter to screen the tire shreds, using a water sprayer to rinse the tire shreds, using a freezing tunnel to freeze the tire shreds before they are crushed into tire grains, using a magnet to remove any metallic fibers, filtering out any oversized tire grains for re-freezing and re-crushing, and using a separator to separate out any oversized or undersized pieces before bagging the final tire grains for re-use and recycling.

A method of reclaiming used tennis balls and transforming the material reclaimed from the tennis balls into soles for footwear. This multi-step process requires acquiring used tennis balls, grinding the tennis balls into ground rubber bits (usable elements) and tennis ball “fuzz” (unusable elements). The rubber and fuzz are passed through a screen which allows the rubber bits to exit the screen but retains the fuzz. The rubber is then mixed with an H.sub.2O and Polyurethane mixture to form a rubber mixture. This mixture is then pressed into a shape using a mold, cured, and then used to manufacture footwear.

A method of recovering structural members from a used absorbent article comprising a front sheet, a back sheet and an absorbent body between the front sheet and the back sheet, wherein at least one of the front sheet and the back sheet includes a film, and wherein the absorbent body includes an absorbent body material, may include swelling the used absorbent article with water, applying a physical shock to and disintegrating the swelled used absorbent article into at least the film and the absorbent body material, and separating the film and the absorbent body material.

Systems for manufacturing bulked continuous carpet filament from polymer, where the systems are configured for: (1) passing polymer flakes through a crystalliers; (2) melting the polymer to create a first single stream of polymer melt; (3) separating the first single stream of polymer melt into multiple streams of polymer melt; (4) exposing the multiple streams of polymer melt to a pressure of between about 0 millibars and about 25 millibars in a chamber; (5) recombining the multiple streams of polymer melt into a second single stream of polymer melt; and (6) providing the second single stream of polymer melt to one or more spinning machines that are configured to form the second single stream of polymer melt into bulked continuous carpet filament.

A method for sterilizing and decontaminating post-consumer absorbent sanitary products contaminated by organic compounds deriving from human metabolism and comprising drug residue, said post-consumer absorbent sanitary products comprising fractions of plastic, super-absorbent polymers (SAPs), and optionally cellulose, the method comprising at least the steps of: i) sterilizing (SR) said post-consumer absorbent sanitary products by heating to a temperature equal to or lower than 140° C. and at a pressure comprised between 1 bar and 3.6 bar to obtain sterilized post-consumer absorbent sanitary products; and ii) decontaminating (DC) from organic compounds said sterilized post-consumer absorbent sanitary products by means of an oxidizing treatment. The oxidizing treatment is carried out by putting the sterilized post-consumer absorbent sanitary products in contact with a gas containing ozone preferably at a temperature equal to or higher than 60° C., more preferably comprised between 60° C. and 80° C. The sterilized post-consumer absorbent sanitary products subjected to the decontaminating step have a humidity of less than 80%, preferably comprised between 60% and 75%.

A machine and a method for treating cakes from additive manufacturing processes, wherein the cake contains residual powders and sintered pieces is disclosed. The machine includes a cylindrical vibrating body which is placed in a position above a vibratory finishing or tumbling or vibro-blasting machine and is separated from the vibratory finishing or tumbling or vibro-blasting machine by a remotely operable door and the cylindrical vibrating body obtains its vibration from the machine below. The machine includes means for destructuring the cake in order to obtain the separation of the non-sintered powder from the sintered pieces present in the cake and means for recovering the powder resulting from the destructuring of the cake.

A method of recycling a first polymer from a multi-component polymer product may include subjecting the multi-component polymer product that includes a first polymer and at least one additional component to conditions to melt the first polymer; and filtering the at least one additional component from the molten first polymer.

A method for manufacturing bulked continuous carpet filament, the method comprising: (1) reducing a chamber pressure within a chamber to below about 5 millibars; (2) after reducing the chamber pressure to below about 5 millibars, providing a polymer melt to the chamber; (3) separating the polymer melt into at least eight streams; (4) while the at least eight streams of the polymer melt are within the chamber, exposing the at least eight streams of the polymer melt to the chamber pressure of below about 5 millibars; (5) after exposing the at least eight streams of the polymer melt to the chamber pressure of below about 5 millibars, recombining the at least eight streams into a single polymer stream; and (6) forming polymer from the single polymer stream into bulked continuous carpet filament.

A method is described for recycling the infill of a synthetic turf, said infill being formed by a plurality of different granular materials, including at least sand granules, polymeric material granules and synthetic grass filaments, said method comprising the following steps: drying the infill, screening the infill through a plurality of successive screens (130,140,180, 185) each having passage holes of different sizes subdividing the infill into a plurality of groups of granular material having different size ranges, separating each group of granular material into two subgroups of granular material based on the difference in density of the materials, and conveying the separated subgroups of granular materials to different collection containers.

An installation (1) and method for treating composite products (2) based on thermoplastic material(s) for recycling purposes, the installation at least comprising means (3, 4, 4′, 5, 6) for heating, for reducing size, for crushing and for separating, said means being arranged to form at least one line (1′) for treating and extracting material(s) to be reused, operating as a continuous or intermittent flow, and regulated if necessary. The installation (1) is characterised in that the means (3) for heating and reducing size comprise at least one heated screw mixer, the crushing means comprise at least one roll crusher (4, 4′) comprising two rolling rollers (7 and 7′) that are heated and set into rotation in opposite directions, the separating means (5, 6) comprise at least one macroscopic separating means (5) in the form of a device for discharging macroscopic polluting particles present in the output (3′), and the separating