Key factors of eddy current separation for recovering aluminum from crushed e-waste

Recovery of e-waste in China had caused serious pollutions. Eddy current separation is an environment-friendly technology of separating nonferrous metallic particles from crushed e-waste. However, due to complex particle characters, separation efficiency of traditional eddy current separator was low. In production, controllable operation factors of eddy current separation are feeding speed, (ωR-v), and S_p. There is little special information about influencing mechanism and critical parameters of these factors in eddy current separation. This paper provided the special information of these key factors in eddy current separation of recovering aluminum particles from crushed waste refrigerator cabinets. Detachment angles increased as the increase of (ωR-v). Separation efficiency increased with the growing of detachment angles. Aluminum particles were completely separated from plastic particles in critical parameters of feeding speed 0.5m/s and detachment angles greater than 6.61deg. S_p/S_m of aluminum particles in crushed waste refrigerators ranged from 0.08 to 0.51. Separation efficiency increased as the increase of S_p/S_m. This enlightened us to develop new separator to separate smaller nonferrous metallic particles in e-waste recovery. High feeding speed destroyed separation efficiency. However, greater S_p of aluminum particles brought positive impact on separation efficiency. Greater S_p could increase critical feeding speed to offer greater throughput of eddy current separation. This paper will guide eddy current separation in production of recovering nonferrous metals from crushed e-waste.