Abstract
Better management of secondary resources, such as copper, aluminium and plastics from electric wire and cable waste requires improved methods of processing of reusable materials. This paper presents three typical examples of recycling technologies, each of them using the capability of electric fields to sort metallic and insulating materials from granular mixture. The efficiency of corona–electrostatic separation as a basic operation of a recycling flowsheet has been demonstrated for feedrates not exceeding 200 kg/hour. At the same time, it has been proved that electroseparation can represent a complement to conventional air–gravity separation of metals and insulators from industrial wastes. The in–plant tests provided useful information for a customs–design of corona–electrostatic separators.
Highlights
Large quantities of valuable materials can be recovered from rejected electric or electronic products
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the corona-electrostatic separation methods can, for some industrial wastes, such as electric wire and cable scrap, gain a better position in the resources market
Aimed at clearing up the main steps between the theory and the applications of corona--electrostatic separation: (1) the feasibility analysis based on materials properties and on a simplified mathematical model
Summary
Large quantities of valuable materials can be recovered from rejected electric or electronic products. In Romania, electric wire and cable wastes represent the most important secondary resource of copper and plastics for electrotechnical industry. As pointed out by Kaplan and Ness [1], the copper-bearing wastes account presently in the U.S.A. to almost 50 per cent of all raw copper materials, and secondary aluminium represents about 25 per cent of total aluminium production. There are two main sources of cable waste (Fig. 1): manufacturers and consumers, i.e. plants where electric wire is either confected or compounded into final products. These "pre-application" wastes [5], clean and homogeneous, are easier to process than "post-application" wastes (generated during renewing and maintenance activities) which are mixtures of different sorts of metals, plastics and rubber, contaminated with dust, oil, grease etc. The primary role of all waste-processing units ("in-plant" recycling workshops, specialized waste waste processors, urban refuse collectors) is to collect, J z oO
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