Chile Scrap Metal Recycling

Chile Scrap Metal Recycling—Wires and Cables
Coaxing attractive, high-quality non-ferrous grades from scrap wire and cable has become an important segment of the metals industry of Chile, and Chile focuses on designing the process that will yield the purest grades of copper and aluminum

Pre-work: carefully sorting and then pre-chopping wire can help processors create a high-quality product.
Wire chopping lines with high volume of output and wire choppers with small but steady capacity, which are for cutting wires and cables into small pieces and beginning the separation process of plastic coating from the metal, have gained favor in Chile, because they are sturdy enough to handle large volume of wires and cables while saving wear and tear on the granulators that eventually process the wires and cables. And wire stripping machines have long been available to scrap wires and cables processors in Chile as a way to separate metal from plastic and create marketable materials.

In spite of the advantage of scrap metal recycling, it is not free from the environment problems, so Chile, this country has been developing clean recycling technology that is flexible, efficient, less energy consuming, free from use of harmful substances, minimize waste and emissions and more eco-friendly.

1. Clean Aluminum Stripping
In addition to alloying elements, aluminum scrap often includes lacquers, paints and plastic coatings. Chile scrap metal recycling has used a fluidised bed reactor that can remove such coatings from aluminum scrap containing up to 50% organic material. The aluminum scrap is introduced to a hot fluidised bed of alumina that heats the scrap and oxidises its organic component.
2. Clean Copper Refining
Chilean copper is produced by two processes: concentrators, including mining, crushing, milling, flotation, obtaining concentrates (30-35% Cu), and hydrometallurgical plants, including mining, crushing, heap leaching, solvent extraction and electro winning, obtaining copper cathodes (99.99% Cu). A portion of concentrates are treated in smelters and electro-refineries, obtaining copper cathodes, while other portion is exported to be treated in international smelting and refining plants.
Hydrometallurgical processes using leaching, purification of leach liquor and Electrowinning have hitherto acquired importance only for the processing of large deposits of low grade oxidised copper ores. Direct electro-refining of scrap in sulphate solution using anode support system is environmentally and economically very attractive and processes based on stainless steel or titanium anode system are being developed/used industrially in Chile. Direct electrowinning has been suitable for high quality (>95% Cu) low volume scrap.

Chile Scrap Metal Recycling—E-waste 
Urban mining, a growing industry focused on extracting metals from discarded computers and other electronic waste, is set to grow in Chile with benefits. Chile’s proven expertise in metal smelting is key to the country’s rise in e-waste recycling. The Latin American country produces more than a third of the world’s copper and is a significant extractor and exporter of gold and other metals.
Both copper and gold are used widely in electronics. For many Chileans, recycling e-waste holds a special fascination as they point out Chilean copper or gold may travel across the globe for processing in e-waste, only to end up again Chile as part of the consumer world’s e-waste mountains.
The electronic waste recycling industry in Chile is dominated by one company, Recycla. Companies bring electronic waste directly to the Recycla plant or hire Recycla to collect the e-waste for recycling. And there are local companies to recycle CRT glass, metals and plastic.

Chile Scrap Metal recycling—Auto Waste
The auto recycling market is untapped in South America, all or most part of cars are recycled except the metal, and the estimate is an average of 1 million plus tonnes of scrap metal in Chile alone; this kind of scrap metal recycling has the full backing of Chilean government as well as local companies looking for affordable raw materials; and this kind of recycling has high interest in global markets like Japan, India and China. All of these factors create great opportunities for Chile auto-recycling.
The car recycling plant is heavily dependent on specialized lorries which will be required to collect the scrap cars. The first step after the cars have been collected is to strip them of other materials like plastics, fabrics, leathers, used oil, lubricants and so on. The second step is to shred the metals using a specialized machine that will shred the metal to make the metal ready to be used by foundries.

Difference in In-use Stocks of Metal Worldwide

The continued increase in the use of metals over the 21st century has led to a substantial change from below the ground to above the ground in the form of application in society. As for which changes brought by such shift in society, economy and environment, we have to have a basic understanding of the in-use stocks of metals worldwide.

Copper and aluminum are of vital importance in the development of various industries. The capacity of copper decides the usage of copper, which is widely used for electrical infrastructure in buildings. It is certain that stocks in cities of more-developed countries possess significantly higher amounts in-use stocks per capita than in cities of less developed countries. For instance, the capital of America, the amount of copper in-use stocks per capita is nearly four times higher than in Cape Town, South Africa.

As with the example of copper, differences are in in-use stocks can be seen in the case of aluminum. Japan and America possess the highest in-use stocks and exceed the value of China by 9 and 13 times. Besides, the average values of per capita in-use stocks of aluminum for Europe, Japan and America are more than four times higher than the world average value.

From the above, we know that most in-use stocks residue in developed countries, therefore those developing countries should have closely watch about this trend so as not to be controlled by other countries. Meanwhile, metals resources are non-renewable resources; hence adopting coping strategy in time is very necessary. Metal recycling is inevitable way to realize economy’s sustainable development.

Amisy, an expert manufacturer of copper recycling equipments, has 12 years experience of producing copper cable granulator and wire stripping machines. It is certain that we can be your best partner on the way to the kingdom of fortune.

Scrap Copper Wire/Cable Recycling in UK

Metal recovery is a kind of emerging industry in UK. And metal recycling is a £ 5.6 billion UK industry. The industry employs over 8,000 people and makes at a net contribution to UK balance trade. At the same time, UK is the first country in the world promoting the business of recycling scrap metal, and this country has carried out the scrap metal recycling plan in 2002, which had a good effect in the first year’s implement: processing 103 tons of scrap metal and other metal recycling accessories.

Copper scrap is used by both primary and secondary producers, and there are two main kinds of copper scrap for recycling today in UK

1.Clean, unalloyed, and uncoated copper solids, clippings, commutator segments, clean pipe and tubing, etc.

2.Copper wire/cable
---copper bright wire (bare bright wire): thicker than 1/16 of an inch and clean, no corrosion, no insulation.

---the highest grade of copper wire: still has insulation on it; copper content is 55% or higher by weight; does not have any aluminum or steel coating; the inside copper strands are more than 1/16of an inch or at least as thick as a standard pencil lead.

---medium insulated copper wire: copper content is 40%-50% by weight; the inside copper strands need to be more than 1/16 of an inch or at least as thick as a standard pencil lead.

---low copper content copper wire: lowest grade and has about 25%, the least amount of copper; includes computer cables and other heavily insulated wires.

---household copper wiring: it is the electrical wire commonly used in homes and buildings; covered by an outer insulation and contains 2 or 3 individually insulated copper wires inside.


---Christmas lights: use and broken Christmas lights can be recycled for its copper.

Scrap Copper Wire/Cable Stripping Process in UK

Scrap copper wire/cable recovery is a kind of scrap metal recycling with huge number and high recycle rate in UK. And the first step of scrap copper wire/cable recycling process is to separate the copper wire/cable from its insulating layer. And there are four methods:

1.Mechanical separating method
Processing by drum stripping machine: this process method is to deal with the copper wire/cable of the same thickness, and the factory of UK named Wolver Hampton is using this method. The copper wire/cable should be cut into proper segments in the first place and their length should be less than 300 mm, and then these segments are fed into the drum cutter to complete stripping. This process method has high comprehensive utilization level to recycle the copper and plastic from the scrap copper wire/cable; reduced plastic in the copper scrap after process and reduced air pollution when smelting.

Processing by wire stripping machine: it is used to strip thick copper wire/cable.

2.Deep freezing method: it is suitable for the copper wire/cable of various specifications. And it separates the copper from the insulation layer by crushing the fragile insulation layer after freezing.

3.Chemical separating method: this method is adopting a kind of organic solvent to dissolve the insulating layer to get high quality copper wire.

4.Thermal decomposition method: it is to burn off the insulating layer to get the pure copper wire.

A Brief Introduction of Scrap Baling Press

A Brief Introduction of Scrap Baling Press

For different needs, there are two kinds of scrap baling presses,that is hydraulic baler and horizontal baler.

Hydraulic vertical baler is a kind of baling press machine and its material is loaded from the front and compressed from the top down. Vertical baler is smaller compared to the horizontal baling press machine in size and capacity. The material baled by vertical baler need to be manually strapped. There are different kinds of hydraulic vertical balers with the compressing force from 10 tons to 60 tons for you to choose due to different waste materials, such as waste paper, cardboard, cartons, plastic bottles, used clothing, coconut fibers, used beverage containers, fabric scrap, tires, wood shavings and so on.

Horizontal Baling Press Machine is much larger both in size and capacity. The waste material is loaded from the top by conveyor or air cyclone system and compressed from the sides automatically. The horizontal baling press, equipped with PLC and touch screen, is ideal equipment for baling large quantities of recyclable materials and the capacity range can be from 1.5 tons/h to 40 tons/h (waste paper). The recyclable materials such as scrap papers, card boards, carton boxes, plastic films, and other loose materials can be fed into the baling press automatically and continuously, so the utilization of Automatic Horizontal Baling Press Machine can reduce labor cost greatly. On the other hand, these loose materials are compressed into compact tight bales which make them easier to transport and stack.

The Structure of Automatic Baling Press Machine

Frame part: machine body, conveyor, shrinking structure, wire strapping device, wire cutting device, hopper, platen, ram guiding device

Hydraulic part: motor, pump, hydraulic valve, hydraulic cylinder, pressure meter, filter, oil tank, etc.

Electric part: air switch, PLC, touch screen, operation control button, relays etc.

Applications of Large Capacity Horizontal Baling Press

1. It can be utilized in logistics, central storages, paper industry, printing plants and large waste recycling stations, etc.

2. It is suitable for baling light-puffy and loose materials such as cotton, wool, waste paper, waste carton, waste paperboard, yarn, tobacco leaf, plastic, cloth, woven bag, knitted velvet, fiber, gunny bag, wool top, hairball, cocoon, silk, hop flower, wheat straw, grass, waste plastic etc.

US Wire and Cable Recycling

The US scrap metal recycling industry which is driven by a recovering US economy, a growing Asian economy, and the growing demand for products manufactured with recycled materials, continues to grow with a value of billions of dollars. Despite the volatile economic activity across the global markets, the outlook for the metal recycling sector remains positive as the demand for scrap metal grows among both domestic and global consumers.

In America, there are also growing concerns over e-waste. In response, electronic manufacturers, regulators and recyclers are looking for more productive ways of separating copper and aluminum from insulation to create new metals by recovering scrap wires/cables.

Wires/Cables Recovery Systems in the United States

Stage1: recover up to 98% of insulated and bare wires

Using a sorting system to recognise fine metal particles with a highly-sensitive electro-magnetic sensor that can also identify insulating polymer coatings made of PVC, PP, PE or rubber with an additional high resolution near infrared sensor.

Stage2: recover up to 95% of insulated wires

The signals from both sensors are analyzed with the help of the newly developed processing technology which delivers high-precision results. This means the insulated copper/aluminum wires/cables can be safely identified and separated with up to 90% of purity.

And to achieve the final separation of metal (copper and aluminum) from the insulation layers, there are several steps included in the process:

1.Material separation: pre-sorting of copper and aluminum from insulated layers and other particles, as well as different grades metals. A number of processors in US has now established systems to get copper or aluminum from their materials. These methods may include dry systems, such as electrostatic separators, and wet separation systems that use shaker tables and cyclones.

2. Shredding: mandated by efficiency reasons in larger plants, but still optional in smaller plants

3. Granulation: usually accomplished in multiple stages

4. Screening: an optional stage that is used before or/and after final to enhance recovery

4. Density separation: where the actual separation and recovery of the copper or aluminum from the insulation occurs, using simple aspiration (an air wash of the insulation away from the metallics) and/or fluidized bed separation

5. Tailing process: various procedures, dedicated to either enhancing metals recovery or to conditioning the tailings for recovery or final disposition.

Wires/Cables Recycling Equipment Spotlights in US

Automated Recycling Products, Inc. (APPI) in America offers three models of wire stripper: the DRM, the smallest; the COMC and the REC. All these three models will strip the plastic insulation from wire diameter of 1/8” to 1 1/8”. And Cumberland offers granulators for recycling, injection molding, extrusion, blow molding and all other polymer industry processes. 

Wire and cable recycling involves the extraction of reclaimable copper and aluminum scrap, so that the resultant clean metal can be resold and reprocessed. The equipment used in that extraction process must be especially efficient to improve the purity of resulting material. To that effect, we, Amisy metal recycling machines, have been working hard to upgrade our equipment to better serve the growing market demand including the US market.

We are now supplying small-sized wire strippers, which is used for removing the insulation layer from various kinds of scrap wires with the diameter of 1 mm-42 mm; different model for different wire diameter: AMS-918A for diameter of 1 mm-25 mm, AMS-918F for diameter of 1 mm-30 mm, AMS-918KA for diameter of 1 mm-35 mm, AMS-918KOB for diameter of 1 mm-42 mm. And large-sized cable stripping machine, which is a heavy-duty stripping machine for high-volume stripping process, AMS-918B for diameter of 2 mm-85 mm, AMS-918B-1 for diameter of 10 mm-165 mm, so this machine supplied by us is mainly employed by large-scale wire/cable stripping business worldwide; also its multi-functions of processing single-core and double-core flat wires at one time contributes a lot to its popularity.

Mini AMS-400 copper wire granulator for household and small-scale recycling business; AMS-400 scrap copper wire granulator, a integrated one, for recovering automotive wires, telephone wires and cables; AMS600 copper/aluminum granulator for wires and cables with diameter that is not more than 20 mm; AMS-800 copper granulator with 99.99% purity rate for large-scale recycling business. They are the other featured wires/cables recycling equipments from us.

How to Sort Scrap Metal

Scrap Metals is generated by the disposal of items that are no longer serviceable or wanted. They are not biodegradable, therefore are well suitable for recycling. However, how to sort them for recycling is still a problem for many people.

The most important circle of sorting scrap metal is to separate ferrous meal from non-ferrous metal. It can be difficult to identify and sort scrap metal since some of them look the same. This is why we should always have a magnet! A magnet will be your good helper in identifying ferrous and non-ferrous metals. Ferrous metal is magnetic, including iron, steel and others; non-ferrous metal are all not magnetic like aluminum, copper and brass. You can put the first into one pile and latter into another pile.

Now let’s go to non-ferrous pile first.Copper, aluminum,brass, gold are all the valuable recyclable materials. Copper is lightweight and reddish in color. It may become greenish over time due to corrosion. In recycling process, it can be classified into three kinds:

Electrical wires. Some metal recyclers accept wire with the insulation on yet at a much lower price compared with wires which has been removed insulation by cable granulator.

Copper tubing. You also had better remove any brass fittings from the tubing, or scrap recycling companies likely offer you a lower price because of labor cost of removing the brass by them.
 

Copper tanks such as special and water heater tanks. These tanks are considered heavy copper and should be removed any attached insulation, covers and fittings.

Aluminum is a lightweight metal with a dull silver color. Sosa cans,lightweight lawn furniture and aluminum wire are considered light aluminum while all other aluminum is considered heavy aluminum. Aluminum wire can be stripped by wire stripping machine. Pure aluminum wire will be given higher price.

Then, let’s come to the pile of ferrous metal. Tin, lead and steel are the main kinds of ferrous metal.Steel is a very solid and strong material that normally will be rust colored if weathed. Lead item will be dark gray in color. Lead is often used for piping, scuba diving weights and fishing plumbs. If you have lead batteries , please put them in another pile as well. Car batteries are a good example. Tin can be bent and will make a cracking sound as you bend it. You can make classification of them according to these characteristics. 

How to Recycle Radiator Scrap?

How to Recycle Radiator Scrap

Radiator is widely used in cars, trucks and other automobiles. Radiators were also once an essential part of a home heating system. In today’ s life, AC radiator is more known by commons. Before discussing how to recycle radiator, let’s have a general knowledge of this three kinds of radiators.

Radiator in older cars were likely made of brass or copper. In newer cars, radiators are typically constructed out of aluminum which is lighter and less expensive. Radiators also have headers or tanks at each end to hold the coolant. These can be made of brass, aluminum or plastic.

Unlike a car radiator, heating radiator is used in your home for heating.It appeared in mid-1980s and fell out of use in the mid-1900s. This kind radiator is always made of cast iron.

The present air conditioner is usually made of compressor, radiator, throttle and evaporator. Gas and fluid are exchanged in radiator, at the same time, the pressure and temperature change. Without radiator, it can’t cool and warm the house. Now radiator is usually made of copper tube and aluminum foil. Both of them have great recyclable value.

Now let’s say how to recycle them. Unless you work on cars yourself, you won’t have chance to see radiator and do not really want to. The best way for you to recycle your radiator is to let your mechanic remove it and recycle it, or recycle your entire car. Radiator in your home should also be recycled at a scrap metal yard.

The recycling of AC radiator is a little complex since the copper tube is covered by aluminum foil. To recycle it, we can use radiator copper&aluminum stripper. Amisy radiator recycling machine can strip the radiator whose copper tube center distance is 19 mm, 21 mm and 25 mm. The scrap radiator fin should be put into the inlet smoothly and the stripped copper pipes and aluminum foil can be discharged automatically. After being separated, the copper tube will keep complete and the aluminum foil will become irregular pieces.