Farrel Pomini, WF Recycling-Tech key cogs in circularity wheel

DUESSELDORF, Germany—Sustainability, like continuous compounding, cannot occur without innovation or partnerships.

It's why Ansonia, Conn.-based Farrel Pomini, a subsidiary of Freudenberg, Germany-based HF Mixing Group, is appearing at K 2022 with WF Recycle-Tech Ltd.

The latter firm, with which Farrel Pomini partnered in 2021, is a Camberley, England-based company that specializes in pyrolysis for recycling end-of-life tires. The WF Recycle-Tech system offers a patented approach to other pyrolysis methods currently available.

"This is especially important to Farrel Pomini as we have obtained our ISO 14001 certification, a family of standards related to environmental management that is akin to the ISO standard for quality," said Paul Lloyd, president of Farrel Pomini. "The ink is still drying on the certification, but we have it. ISO 14001 certification is an important component of … our strategy."

WF Recycle-Tech uses Farrel Pomini for its continuous compounding process in its tire recycling methods. Farrel Pomini, researches, designs and manufactures compounding systems that specialize in abrasive, temperature-sensitive and high-fill applications.

"(Sustainability) has been a significant focus for us in 2022 and will continue into 2023," Lloyd said. "We believe that having a strong environmental, social and governance strategy will help us attract customers who want to produce more sustainable products, lower our energy consumption, boost employee motivation and attract the best talent through greater social credibility."

With about 100 employees, Farrel Pomini does the entirety of its design and mixing across 60,000 square feet of space in Connecticut.

The company works exclusively in the plastics space and primarily supplies equipment to compounders and masterbatch producers. HF Mixing Group works in both the plastics and rubber industries. Farrel Pomini compounding equipment processes a variety of polymers including polyolefins, PVC, biodegradables and recyclate.

"We put polymers together," Lloyd said. "We start with a feedstock with limited mechanical and physical properties, and we enhance those properties, adding compounds to enhance the recipe of the polymer.

"And sustainability remains at the fore of what we're doing now."

The company boasts a large, 390-kilowatt solar array on its roof, which generates up to 75 percent of the energy required for the Ansonia facility. This is equivalent to saving 23,797 gallons of gas, or about 463,682 pounds of CO2, per year, the company said.

The company sees a significant amount of customer development work with biodegradables and recycled materials.

"We have a much bigger lever in the push to sustainability with these products," Lloyd said. "We also are very active in research and development, especially as it relates to biopolymers."

Enter WF Recycling-Tech for the second tier of Farrel Pomini's push toward a greener world. Farrel Pomini boasts an R&D team that works in making greener high-density polyethylene and PVC products, as well as recovered carbon black.

The third tier, Lloyd said, is the company's development in work equity investments.

"In a sense, this takes us to the rubber side as well, as we are helping to solve the circularity issue for tires," Lloyd said. "So, there is some cross-over in this problem-solving."

The notion of digitization is not lost on the employees at Farrel Pomini, either, as the company employs predictive maintenance in its processes.

"When we think about the environment with continuous wear-sensing, we can use information from sensors, algorithms from sensors to make predictions as to what essential maintenance is required," Lloyd said. "This can help with environmental efficiency as well as to reduce down time."

Farrel Pomini already is engaged in conversations about energy conservation, a critical topic as Russia's unprovoked war in Ukraine rages and the European Union considers oil and natural gas rationing.

"As electricity consumption increases, this will continue to be a factor. We have concentrated a lot of time and effort in this area," Lloyd said.

For example, Farrel Pomini continuous mixing equipment does not use any side feeders for its mixers, which require much more energy to run than vertical feeders, which Farrel Pomini now uses.

As side feeders use about 15 KWh of power, and there are two to three side feeders per mixer, this results in 6,000 hours per year that could be eliminated with a single vertical feeder, Lloyd said.

"We are working in areas to save energy that people do not typically consider," he said. "The key thing for us is that all this adds up in a reduction in energy use. We have been pushing our people to think very hard about this.

"We are engineering and innovating to meet the sustainability challenge and make a better, higher quality product, sustainably using new materials that are coming in to the market. All of this is aimed at efficiency and being more competitive."

Also featured at the Farrel Pomini/HF Mixing/WF Recycling-Tech booth was a new high-dispersion rotor, which is designed for use with the company's compact processors.

Farrel Pomini said the rotor is single-stage and "is ideal for processing fiber-grade, high-color carbon black and color concentrates."