PE Film Edge Trim
Recycling & Pelletizing Lines

This dry-process line is designed for in-house industrial PE film waste: LDPE, HDPE, LLDPE and mLLDPE blown film in the form of edge trim, roll waste, start-up purge and lightly printed scrap (up to approximately 30% ink coverage). It is not designed for heavily contaminated post-consumer film, agricultural mulch film with soil loading, or material requiring pre-washing. Those applications require a wet-process line with an upstream washing and drying stage.

Yes, with the correct degassing configuration. For film with up to approximately 30% ink coverage, a single-stage system with two degassing zones is typically sufficient. For film with 30–100% print coverage, a two-stage system with three degassing zones and double-pass filtration is required to achieve acceptable pellet quality. If you are unsure of your average ink coverage, specify for the higher contamination level — a two-stage system handles both clean and printed film, while a single-stage system cannot be easily upgraded after installation.

A cutter compactor is a feeding device that uses a rotating cutter drum to simultaneously shred and frictionally heat loose film, compacting it into a dense, semi-molten mass before it enters the extruder. Thin PE film has very low bulk density — loose edge trim and roll waste cannot feed consistently into a standard screw extruder. Without a cutter compactor, the screw feeds air instead of material, causing surging, inconsistent output and poor pellet quality. For most PE film recycling applications, a cutter compactor is not optional — it is a fundamental requirement of the feeding system.

Water-ring pelletizing cuts the melt at the die face and immediately cools the pellets in a water ring — producing lenticular or cylindrical pellets in a continuous, high-speed process. It is the standard choice for PE film recycling because it handles the low melt viscosity of LDPE and LLDPE well and produces a consistent pellet shape. Strand pelletizing extrudes the melt as strands, cools them in a water bath, then cuts them into pellets. It produces more uniform cylindrical pellets but requires stable melt pressure and is more sensitive to viscosity variation in recycled material. For most in-house PE film recycling applications, water-ring pelletizing is the more practical choice.

A single-stage system extrudes, degasses and pelletizes in one pass. It is suitable for clean or lightly contaminated in-house film waste with up to approximately 30% print coverage. A two-stage system passes the melt through a second extrusion and filtration stage, providing an additional degassing zone and a second filtration pass. This produces higher-purity pellets from more demanding waste streams — moderately to heavily printed film, or mixed scrap with variable contamination. Two-stage systems cost more and consume more energy, but produce pellets that are more consistently suitable for blend-back into production film.

Yes, with controlled blending. Recycled PE pellets from a correctly specified line are compatible with standard blown film extrusion conditions. They are typically blended with virgin resin at a ratio determined by the target application and film quality requirements. For non-food industrial film, garbage bags and heavy-duty sacks, higher recycled content ratios are commonly used. For applications with surface quality, print registration or optical clarity requirements, a lower blend ratio is standard. The blend ratio should be established through trial runs after the recycling line is commissioned — it is not a fixed number.

Start with your total blown film line throughput and your scrap rate. As a reference: a blown film line producing 200 kg/h running 20 hours per day generates 4,000 kg of film per day. At a 5% scrap rate, that is 200 kg of recyclable waste per day. If your recycling line runs 8 hours per day, you need a minimum output capacity of 25 kg/h — well within the range of a small single-stage system. For a factory with three blown film lines at similar throughput, the daily waste volume triples, and the recycling line capacity must be sized accordingly. Share your line count, throughput per line and estimated scrap rate with LayerQuestar Machinery and we will size the system for your specific situation.

Not with a continuous screen changer. A continuous (non-stop) screen changer allows the operator to replace the screen while the line continues running at full output. A stop-type screen changer requires a brief production halt and causes a pressure surge when restarted, which can affect pellet quality in the minutes immediately after changeover. For recycled PE film — which typically has higher contamination than virgin material and therefore requires more frequent screen changes — a continuous screen changer is strongly recommended. It is included as standard in LayerQuestar Machinery's PE film recycling line configuration.

Bubbles in pellets are almost always caused by insufficient degassing — moisture or ink volatiles that were not fully vented from the melt before pelletizing. The first step is to verify that all degassing zone vents are open and unobstructed, then check whether the throughput rate has been increased beyond the system's degassing capacity. Black specks typically indicate either thermally degraded material from overheating at a specific zone, or carbon contamination from ink pigments that were not fully filtered. Check the temperature profile for any zone running above specification, and verify the screen changer is not partially blocked and bypassing contaminated melt. If the problem persists after these checks, contact LayerQuestar Machinery's after-sales team with your temperature log and screen change frequency data.

Not reliably. A standard blown film extruder is designed for clean, consistent virgin or blended resin in pellet or powder form. It lacks the degassing zones required to handle moisture and ink volatiles in recycled film, the hardened screw and barrel needed to withstand abrasive contaminants, and the continuous screen changer required for contaminated melt filtration without production interruption. Attempting to process recycled film through a standard blown film extruder typically results in poor pellet quality, accelerated screw and barrel wear, and frequent production stoppages. A dedicated recycling line with the correct feeding, degassing and filtration configuration is the correct solution.