Efficiency Improvement for Plastic Recycle Process

Abstract

Plastics are improtant role in people's daily lives all around the world. Especially in the case of the COVID-19 epidemic. The situation of the COVID-19 outbreaks making the trend to use more plastic thus causing an increase in plastic waste. This research proposed an improve the efficiency of the recycling plastic production process by developing machinery or assistive devices. The objective is to improve the efficiency of the recycled plastic production process more efficient to reducing the operation time and waste in the process. We have developed a conveyor for plastic (Low density polyethylene; LDPE) into the hopper of plastics extruder machine to be used in the recycling process. Before the improvement, it was found that the loading of plastic into the hopper of 5.06 minutes per cycle and there are plastic scraps dropped during the loading of 0.20 kilogram per cycle. After improvement, the time was reduced to 2.06 minutes per cycle, 60% of the time reduction and plastic dropped during filling 0.05 kilogram per cycle, accounting for 75% of the waste reduction. We consider the economics, it was found that the cost savings of 245,134 Baht per year. The payback period was about 1 year and 1 month. Finally, this research can reduce fatigue for employees and reduce costs, which increases profits for the organization.