Continuous Electric Sorting in the Recycling Process of Plastics

Abstract

Continuous Electric Sorting in the Recycling Process of PlasticsThe continuous electric sorting is a process to separate mixed plastics in dry state with relatively little expenditure of energy. However, the electro-static charging, which is the basic requirement for specific separation, is a physical phenomenon of high complexity. An overview is given of the state-of-the-art of science about the electrostatic charging of plastics.Examples from practice are then employed to demonstrate to control of charging and separation processes.

Electrostatic separation of binary mixtures of some biodegradable polymers and poly(vinyl chloride) or poly(ethylene terephthalate)

“…The electrostatic sorting, or the electrostatic separation, has become a subject of many studies. The results obtained so far prove usability, small environmental pollution load, and economic effectiveness of that method, utilized in mechanical recycling of the waste that contains commonly used polymers [5][6][7].…”

“…* ) Author for correspondence; e-mail: marzenk@ukw.edu.pl used technique, in which the friction between the polymer particles occurs in a fluidized moving bed [12,13]. The tribocharging effects depend here on the conditions under which this process is carried out, e.g., duration of the tribocharging process and humidity of the surrounding air, as well as on types of polymers being tribocharged and their positions in the triboelectric series [5,6,11,[14][15][16].…”

Electrostatic Separation

“…The process of electrostatic separation of plastics [31,34,52,341,342] is carried out to recover valuable secondary raw materials from production or post-consumer wastes.…”