If you live in an area with recycling facilities, there’s a good chance you put your trash into specialized bins for different types of materials. When you place these containers out for pickup, a truck brings them to the recycling plant or you drive them to a waste district on your own. From there, the waste is separated by a variety of equipment that includes shredders, pulverizers, compactors, granulators, and balers that compress large piles into manageable sizes for transporting and shipping.
All of these machines reduce the size of waste to prepare it for repurposing and reprocessing into new products. They may also separate items based on their color and material. These processes can save a great deal of money and energy, as well as protect the environment.
Most of the separating equipment is designed for particular kinds of recycled materials, such as metal cans or plastic bottles. For example, a single shaft shredder can reduce scrap materials to a fine, powdered form. Other processing equipment is used for specific kinds of raw materials, such as agglomeration machines that physically transform loose plastic material into densified chips ready to be fed to an extruder. A conical granule extruder from Netplasmak can recycle polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC, ABS, rubber, and other polymers into new raw materials.
Some of the newest and most innovative recycling machines are reverse vending machines that return money or other forms of incentivization based on the number of bottles or cans a person returns to the machine. This can help increase the amount of waste that gets recycled because people are more likely to do so if they see an immediate advantage.
The most important thing to remember about these machines is that they are only meant for the items that are recyclable, and not everything else. So, before you chuck broken toys or resin patio furniture into the recycling bin, check if the facility accepts them or search online for ways to reuse these items.
Once the material is reduced to a standardized size, it can be placed on a conveyor line and sorted into appropriate bins. A vibrating conveyor system can move the materials, and workers may use manual claws to extract anything that won’t go through the sorting process. This is typically done to prevent jamming and to remove any non-recyclables, such as coat hangers or plastic bags.
The next step for paper is to be soaked in water to break it down to wet pulp, and then filtered through a de-inker that’s an aerated tank of surfactants and more water to remove inks and dyes. A magnetic field above the conveyor attracts aluminum, and strategic puffs of air push it onto a separate conveyor. This is usually the end of the recycling journey, but a few additional steps can be taken depending on the type of product being made from recycled materials. For example, recycled aluminum cans are melted down and poured into molds to make new aluminum cans. recycling machines