The Process Of Automated Recycling Facilities

Recycling is something that we should all be doing. There are many ways you can recycle and it is very important we all do our bit for the environment. So just what happens though when the recycling gets to its destination? A lot of recycling places or often called a “material recovery facility” use automated machines to sort through recycling. Here you can find out just how they do that.

Materials such as iron and steel are sorted with the help of very strong magnets. These magnets typically sit above the conveyor belt that the material moves along. As the material passes under the magnets they pick up any iron and steel.

For paper the materials pass through screens which are actually spinning discs. These are designed to filter between heavy materials and lighter ones eg the paper. The heavier materials are allowed to just pass through onto conveyor belts and the lighter material is moved onto a different set of conveyor belts. Often humans are then used to further sort through the paper separating it by paper type.

It is very common to have plastics sorted by human hand although more and more recycling plants are introducing an automated system for plastics. Depending on how the sorter has been designed the plastics can go through in separate streams or all together. To separate the plastics by the different types a sorter known as a spectroscopic is often used. A special light is used on the material and then sorted by type based on the wavelength combination that is visible in the light. Once the sorter knows what type of plastic it is the plastics can then be sent to the appropriate conveyor belt or straight into a collection bin. The accuracy of this type of automated system is very high and in fact is often 90% or more.

Eddy currents is what is used to separate aluminium cans. An eddy current is actually made up of electric currents that have been induced in conductors that have been exposed to a magnetic field that is changing. A conveyor belt which has a special magnetic component in the head is what an eddy current separator is. Through a rapidly rotating system of permanent magnets which generate a repulsion magnetic field resulting in the getting ejected from the other materials.

Glass is most often separated by human hand based on the colour of the glass such as amber, brown, green and clear. There is some automated process that can be used for this but still human hand is the most common method.

All the sorted material is then compressed really tightly into bales which are sent of to other plants for further processing and often for industrial re-use. Any residue material that is left over is either sent to a landfill or actually passed back through the recycling system.