Electrostatic separation of polymeric granular mixtures from medium and low voltage cables

Abstract

Recycling of electrical and electronic equipments is one of the most important topics that have a great significance for environmental protection. Currently, the most part of electrical cables used for power delivery contains huge amounts of conductors and polymeric materials. Therefore, every year thousands of kilometers of cables are disaffected and the polymeric insulation and metals are recovered for other applications. Generally, the electrical insulation and polymeric sheath of the most part of medium and low voltage cables are made of polyvinyl chloride (PCV) and polyethylene (PE). In view to recycling the mixtures that result from cables chopping, an effective method widely used is the electrostatic separation. The present paper is focused on the electrostatic separation of granular mixtures containing two different PCV sorts that are used for insulation and sheaths of cables. A laboratory-scaled roll-type electrostatic separator is used in order to process a specially prepared granular mixture that consists of particles of sheath and insulations PCV. The results show that the particles of PCV used for conductors' insulation can be sorted from those resulting from PCV sheath chopping. Also, it is observed that, the separation efficiency can be increased by adjusting the applied voltage and the rotation speed of the roll electrode.

Experimental and numerical modeling of DC corona discharge in Wire-Cylinder-Plane configuration

“…Indeed, many of these studies were aimed at reducing its harmful effects which manifest themselves on high voltage electric power transmission lines [1][2][3][4]. Currently, the corona discharge is at the basis of several industrial applications, such as electrostatic dust precipitation [5], surface treatment [6][7], ozone generation [8][9], painting and spraying powders [10], granular mixtures separation [11][12], etc. In addition, corona discharge is exploited for charging dielectric materials for many practical applications in various configurations of electrodes [13][14][15][16].…”

Investigations of Electrostatic and Ionized Fields Analysis for Dual-Electrode System

“…The corona discharge employed in electrostatic approaches is useful in many applications such as dust precipitation, powder spraying, or granular mixtures separation by utilizing the electric forces exerted on such charged particles [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The region in which the electric forces act is widening by using a non-ionizing electrode with an ionizing electrode, dual electrode, resulting in the so called the corona-electrostatic field [7].…”