BHS-Sonthofen supplies rotor mill for ASR processing

Sonthofen, Germany-based BHS-Sonthofen says a rotor impact mill (type RPMX) with chilled cast chrome wear parts has proven effective for the processing of automotive shredder residue (ASR) fine materials at Jansen Shredder Recycling BV in Moerdijk, the Netherlands.

BHS-Sonthofen says the mill, which has been on site for more than a year, has led to significantly decreased wear parts costs for the Dutch auto shredding firm.

In Jansen’s process, it had been using fine-grinding mills directly after eddy current separation to recover remaining metals from the largely nonmetallic ASR fraction. However, it was finding the wear parts costs for those mills were unexpectedly high. ”Glass and mineral components resulted in wear costs of €35 ($39.20) per ton of input material,” says BHS-Sonthofen. Adds the company, “The profits from the recovered metals could not make up for these losses.”

Employees from Jansen Shredder Recycling traveled to Sonthofen with the original input material and performed tests at BHS-Sonthofen’s facility.

The RPMX was identified as a solution because of its solid construction and its chilled cast chrome wear parts, which are designed to be “extremely resistant,” according to BHS-Sonthofen.

“In many cases, the material only needs to be run through our RPMX once to achieve the desired shaping and be able to separate the material on air separation tables,” says Nikolas Kaufeisen, area sales manager in the Recycling & Environment division at BHS-Sonthofen.

He continues, “If pelletizing requirements are not met after the first run through, the material can be run through the rotor impact mill a second time.”

“Adding the rotor impact mill from BHS to the process as an intermediate step resulted in a significant increase in profits,” comments Hans Brekelmanns, managing director at Jansen Shredder Recycling. “We were able to lower wear costs by approximately 75 percent overall.”

The rotor impact mill was integrated in ASR processing at Jansen Shredder Recycling in March 2019, according to BHS-Sonthofen, and it immediately “increased the efficiency of the entire process.”