Foot on the gas

The Imal-Pal group says it is a company which never ceases to keep its foot on the accelerator of innovation.

Research, it says, has always been one of the strengths of this group of companies (which includes Imal, Pal and Globus), in order to "give its customers more effective solutions and ensure continued competitiveness".

Pal srl, one of the two principle companies in the group, says that for over 30 years it has been one of the leading companies in cleaning recycled wood. This it puts down to its continuous investment in that field and to the fact that it intends to "remain the benchmark supplier" in this sector.

With hundreds of references already acquired in comprehensive cleaning systems - and more than 6,000 machines operating all over the world - Pal says its continued focus on innovation and development has led to the creation of an improved cleaning system, named the Cleaning Tower.

The name derives from the fact that the basic idea is to clean the material from all pollutants, while exploiting height as a means to reduce the need for conveyors to carry the material from one machine to the other; it uses gravity to do that.

Regular readers of WBPI will know that the Cleaning Tower was launched on the market several years ago, with a variety of installations around the world including in France, Australia, Brazil and Italy.

However, for 2016 it is presented to the market in its new role, employing the latest technologies which Pal says it has developed through months of design work at its headquarters in Ponte di Piave, near Treviso in eastern Italy.

The company describes the sequence of the tower cleaning steps as follows:

- Perfect selection of the particle size through patented Dynascreen roller sieves of proven efficiency and with a three-year warranty on the rollers. These rollers are available in various models, depending on the type of material to be treated, to ensure greater efficiency of selection and working life of the components, says Pal

- Highly efficient separation of ferrous metals by means of magnets used in various positions (belts, drops, etc) - and of various magnetic strength - which can be varied depending on the power of attraction needed

- Highly efficient and highly reliable separation of non-ferrous metals; technical solutions are provided to ensure the reliability of these systems, even in the presence of particularly dusty materials, says the company

- The new cleaning system for fine particles, with separation of heavy minerals (stones, glass, etc); fine, "even microscopic", sand particles; and MDF fibres

- Removal of lightweight pollutants (plastic, nylon, paper, etc), via the Dynairgrader (patent pending).

Pal says there is also a new system for cleaning micro- and macro-chips from heavy pollutants, based on the new concept of the pneumatic-ballistic separator 'EOLO'.

The company says that this system features reduced energy consumption; a closed system free from external pollution; no blockages and no cleaning, being equipped with a self-cleaning concept; low noise; and high efficiency. Another of Pal's developments was the Cyclops, a separation system using near infra-red (NIR) technology to remove plastic from the chips, which is also able to separate, by a mechanical-pneumatic mechanism, the black plastic pieces which similar systems are not able to remove, says Pal.

Another new development is the Water Pit. This is designed to recover wood from the flows rejected by the system and is able to keep the loss of wood at very low levels, says the company.

There are several advantages claimed by Pal for this new concept, the first of which is the new tower concept, which can be optionally equipped with top and perimeter enclosure, completely pre-assembled, and which is ATEX certifiable.

Furthermore, Pal claims a reduction in costs due to the optimisation of the water pit concept. It says its technical department can develop customised solutions or provide standard solutions, which it has already developed.

The modular system offers choices of 15,30,45, or 60tph - and more - of recycled chips. Modularity reflects remarkably on the volume of investment, says Pal, since the technology of the Tower is also modular, depending on the kind of pollutants to be removed and on the required degree of cleaning.

Pal claims a cleaning efficiency for this system even greater than 99%.

It also claims optimised energy consumption; markedly reduced footprint; very little wood reject thanks to the various stages of cleaning which allow wood to be recovered; and a reduction in the number of conveyors required to forward the material from one cleaning point to another.

In order to be able to demonstrate to its customers the results obtained with these technologies, Pal has, at its head office in Ponte di Piave, a fully-equipped laboratory with industrial machines capable of replicating the flow of material that will take place in the plant and reproducing the results which can be achieved.

This, says Pal, ensures the certainty of the result and guarantees a maximised return on investment.