Adelmann Umwelt GmbH,  based in Karlstadt, Germany, says it has built some 60 refrigerator recycling plants that are now in operation worldwide.

The company says the plants are designed, assembled and commissioned with respect to both technical features and characteristics in process engineering. The plants can be operated according to customer needs.

The recycling system consists of a shredder, a separation unit for PUR foam, iron, synthetic material and aluminium/copper, a pelleting press and an exhaust air decontamination system.

Before the refrigerators are disassembled, the loose inner parts are removed. The operation is followed by the disposal of the oil-CFC/Iso-butane-mixture with the coolant suction system.

After removing the compressor, the refrigerator is moved to Adelmann’s RPWW recycling system. The two-shaft pre-shredder cuts each refrigerator into strips measuring about 50 mm wide. The refrigerators are broken into smaller 20- to 30-millimeter pieces by Adelmann’s post-shredder.

The recyclable materials – aluminium/copper, iron, plastic and PUR-foam – are separated subsequently:

The shredded PUR foam is separated through wind sifting and are moved into the buffer silo of the pelleting press where they are compressed to firm pellets.

Pieces of iron are removed through a magnetic separation belt and neodymium magnets. The eddy current separator removes the residual NE material from the plastic. Pellets from the hammer mill can be separated into aluminium and copper.

The CRC/petane/air mixture from the shredder unit and pelleting press is cooled and frozen, and subsequently condensed and bottled.

One system can recycle up to 60 refrigerators per hour, the company says.

The monitoring system, which includes data loggers, is useful for continuous recording and supervision of the entire system.