How is Technology Lending a Hand in Metal Recycling?

Metals and Mining Review | Monday, January 10, 2022

The use of sensors to identify metals using infrared scanning and x-ray has become prevalent in large recycling plants these days.

FREMONT CA: Metals are worthy materials that can be recycled indefinitely without losing any of their properties. Scrap metal has a monetary value, which helps people to collect it for sale to recycling companies.

There is a financial incentive as well as an environmental imperative. Metal recycling allows one to conserve natural resources while using less energy than manufacturing new products from virgin raw materials. Recycling minimizes the amount of carbon dioxide and other toxic gases emitted. More importantly, it saves money and facilitates manufacturing companies to reduce their production costs. In addition, recycling also generates employment.

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Metal Recycling Industry's Challenges

Given the recyclability of practically every type of metal, the present overall metal recycling rate of roughly 34 percent is unacceptable, and challenges remain regarding how to recapture additional material for recycling. In this sense, the increase of community recycling initiatives and public awareness is beneficial.

Another significant factor contributing to the poor recycling rate is the design of various metal items. The rising complexity of modern items, as well as their material mix, makes recycling more complicated. A smartphone, for example, can include over 70 separate components. As a result, removing all types of elements from a phone and recycling them to create new products is challenging.

Technologies for Metal Recycling

Modern recycling technologies can identify many different types of metals, but there is still a need for even more effective recycling technologies to separate nonferrous metals. One of the most critical steps in the sorting process is separating ferrous metals from nonferrous metals. Because ferrous metals contain iron, magnets attract them and easily pull them from the mixed waste stream. Cranes equipped with an electromagnet can remove larger pieces of ferrous scrap in scrap yards.

When metals are separated from a mixed stream of recyclable materials, the paper is removed first, leaving only metals and plastics. Then, electric currents are induced over the stream, influencing only metals. This is recognized as eddy current separation. Even though aluminum is not magnetic, this technology can levitate it, allowing plastics to exit the process.

Recovering precious metals such as palladium, gold, platinum, and other valuable metals such as copper, lead, and silver from electronic waste becomes economically viable only after collecting a sufficient amount of scrap. This type of separation necessitates the use of more technologically advanced and sophisticated recycling equipment.

The use of sensors to identify metals using infrared scanning and x-ray has become prevalent in large recycling plants these days. Hydrometallurgy, biotechnology, and pyrometallurgy are three significant types of metal detecting techniques, and these technologies have the potential to improve metal recovery rates significantly.

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