Air conditioners and car radiators are composed of copper tubes, aluminum fins, steel frames and plastic accessories. When the crushing is too coarse, the components will still be connected together. If the crushing is too fine, a large amount of light aluminum flakes and copper will be lost, so it is necessary to prepare the appropriate particle size for the sorting equipment.
Material characteristics
- Light iron sheets, aluminum products, copper-aluminum mixtures and briquettes have obvious differences in strength, thickness, shape and packing density.
- Long bars, wires and strips can easily become tangled, and closed containers, wetted parts and superhardware can present safety or equipment risks.
- Volume reduction, furnace front material and sorting material have different requirements on the degree of dissociation, discharge size and proportion of fine materials.
Key processing challenges
- Thin aluminum fins tend to clump and entrain copper tubes.
- If the steel frame is not pre-disassembled, the crushing load and the amount of magnetically separated materials will increase.
- Air separation is sensitive to particle size, material layer and moisture content.
Equipment-selection criteria
- Check tools, axis systems, drives and permitted processing boundaries against maximum thickness, cross-section, piece weight and material grade.
- Determine whether to configure screening, magnetic separation, eddy current and manual quality inspection based on the volume reduction or sorting goals.
- Incorporate inspection of sealing parts, removal of super-hard foreign objects, fire protection and maintenance spaces into the entire line plan.
Typical process flow
The radiator first removes a large piece of steel frame, crushes it to separate copper and aluminum, then removes iron through magnetic separation, controls the particle size through screening, and uses air separation or other physical methods to separate light aluminum and heavy copper.
Information required before project evaluation
Complete information helps us define equipment limits, test plans and the full line accurately:
- Types and proportions of ferrous and non-ferrous metals
- Maximum dimensions, thickness, weight and bulk density
- Plastic, rubber, sediment and liquid impurities
- Sealed containers, steel wire and ultra-hardware situations
- Target discharge, sorting method and downstream use
- Throughput, loading, power and safety conditions