2014-Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit
SIPS 2014 Volume 4: Recycling & Secondary Battery
| Editors: | Kongoli F |
| Publisher: | Flogen Star OUTREACH |
| Publication Year: | 2014 |
| Pages: | 498 pages |
| ISBN: | 978-1-987820-06-5 |
| ISSN: | 2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series) |
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Unlocking the potential of ferrous and non-ferrous metal scrap in fine-grained sorting residue
Mattias Berwanger1; David Ruessmann1; Thomas Pretz1;1DEPARTMENT OF PROCESSING AND RECYCLING, RWTH AACHEN UNIVERSITY, 52062 Aachen, Germany (Deutschland);
Type of Paper: Regular
Id Paper: 45
Topic: 5
Abstract:
In state-of-the-art solid waste treatment, aside from concentrates of various waste fractions, sorting residue of various kinds is produced. The residue is generally not treated further due to quality constraints resulting from insufficient grain size (mm-range) or strongly comingled and low-value fractions. Depending on legal regulations, the residue is either thermally treated in incineration plants or directly land-filled.
The value of ferrous and non-ferrous metals (Fe-/NF-metals) creates a strong motivation for their recovery from residue. In current practice, incineration may destroy metals through vaporization. The subsequent land-filling removes metals from the production cycle for the long term. Furthermore, producing aluminium from aluminium scrap requires 95 % less energy and it produces 92 % less CO2-emissions than production from primary sources.
In experiments, the potential of Fe- and NF-metals in fine-grained sorting residue from scrap shredder heavy fractions was assessed. Six materials of different grain sizes from 0 to 20 mm were included in the experiments. These materials had previously passed through conventional treatment, including comminution, screening, magnetic and eddy-current separation and sifting. The materials were manually sorted and subsequently treated in conventional processes at technical-laboratory scale.
Experiments have shown that fine-grained materials from sorting residue may contain between 9 and 29 wt.-% of Fe-metals and between 2 and 28 wt.-% of NF-metals. Among recovered NF-metals the light fraction (Al, Mg) was more prominent with 75 wt.-% on average compared to the heavy fraction (Cu, Zn, Sn, Pb). Taking into account the available stock of sorting residue in Germany/EU and potential energy savings, these findings indicate possible increase of metal recovery, sustainability and energy efficiency in solid waste management.