Installation aims to maximise recovery

Belgium-based Galloo, a metals and electronics scrap recycler that operates several shredding plants, has teamed up with Cologne, Germany-based sorting and separation equipment maker Steinert to harvest postshredder, fine-grain, sorted materials.

The two European firms have developed a new nonferrous metals separator for fine materials. The new system’s splitter can be set with millimetre (mm) precision, enabling nonferrous metals such as aluminum, copper and zinc to be separated more effectively than ever before, the companies say. Additionally, Steinert says the machine has been designed so a conveyor belt change can be carried out in 10 minutes, without heavily lifting equipment or excessive downtime.

LAYING OUT THE CHALLENGE

In 2013, Galloo wanted to expand and began to conduct studies into more efficient ways of extracting nonferrous metals from fine-grain material.

Menen, Belgium-based Galloo was established in 1939 and has grown into one of Europe’s largest recycling firms, with 40 plants in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The €550 million ($600 million) company’s 600 employees help operate a firm that recovers some 1.4 million tonnes of ferrous metals each year. Added to this are 150,000 tonnes of nonferrous metals (such as aluminium, copper and zinc), as well as alloys such as brass and 60,000 tonnes of nonferrous metals from grate ash. Galloo exports much of the ferrous scrap to steel mills in Turkey, Germany, Belgium and France, while the aluminium and copper is shipped to smelting facilities in Taiwan, Italy and other locations.

Galloo contacted the engineers at Steinert, asking them to develop a flexible machine concept for three different input materials: automobile shredder residue (ASR), incineration bottom ash and electronic scrap.

The challenge with this task is that the input is extremely fine material, with grain sizes of 0.5–10 mm. The goal was to enable the three different materials to be to run through the system flexibly without any drop in the separation rate. Engineers wanted to further optimise the separation of nonferrous metals out of the fine-grain fraction and, at the same time, simplify the machine’s operation and maintenance.

Steinert adapted the output to the machine’s requirements and developed a splitter it says can handle the three different types of fine-grain materials. Fine gearbox adjustments can be made to the splitter to enable it to get to within a few millimetres of the material, separating even the tiniest particles, according to the company. The machines now run at Galloo in two shifts for a total of about 16 hours per day. “We are now buying input material from Germany, Denmark and the United Kingdom, because the system runs so reliably,” says Galloo R&D Officer Luc Waignein.

After the initial installation at Galloo, Steinert’s development and design team began to work on additional features specifically for the fine-grain sector, leading to the creation of its new EddyC Fines model. The EddyC Fines has a frame structure that allows the belt to be replaced in 10 minutes. “Changing the belt of an eddy current separator often takes a company half a day, with up to three employees and heavy lifting equipment needed to perform this task,” says Steinert Technical Director Dr. Nico Schmalbein. With the STEINERT EddyC Fines, two employees can carry out a belt change with nothing more elaborate than a wrench, he says. The easy handling is a big benefit for Galloo. “We now need fewer personnel for belt changes and there is less downtime,” says Waignein.

AN EDDYC ON THE JOB

Galloo also is building a new facility designed to recover exclusively nonferrous metals from grate ash. The ash contains up to six percent iron and up to three percent nonferrous metals. However, the particles are very small, measuring only 0.5 to 4 millimetres. As a result of the previous good experience, Galloo says it is using the EddyC Fines in the new facility.

The new system’s splitter plate has to be precisely adjusted in order to separate the metals from the fine incineration bottom ash material. “A gearbox now enables users to set the splitter plate with millimetre precision along three different axes and adjust it even more accurately to the parabolic trajectories of a wide variety of materials,” says Schmalbein. “In addition, a corresponding upgrade enables the program-controlled system to focus on predefined points of the parabolic trajectory. In combination with a continuously adjustable eccentric magnetic pole drum, this system can achieve optimal separation results.”

This enhancement pays off for Galloo. “The new system will enable us to sort so many tons of incineration bottom ash each year that even small improvements in the separation rate will have a noticeable financial impact,” remarks Waignein. “We mainly recycle aluminium, copper, zinc and brass, as well as a few precious metals such as gold and silver. Besides the separated metals, the remaining metal-free mineral mixture is also valuable.”

The nonferrous metals separator has a rapidly rotating magnetic pole system that induces eddy currents in the nonferrous metals transported on the conveyor belt. The pole drum’s eccentric pole system rotates at 4,000 rpm over a working width of two metres.

The resulting opposing magnetic field creates repulsion effects, which enables the nonferrous product to be ejected from the stream of material. The splitter plate in the parabolic trajectory separates the nonferrous product from the remaining stream of material. “We made sure the splitter plate was adjustable so that the system can react to a variety of input materials,” says Jochen Schäfer, a design engineer at Steinert. “Before we did this, we analysed the flight properties of various materials and used this information to work on the settings. The splitter can be adjusted to specific trajectories in order to accommodate a variety of separation tasks.”

“There is nothing comparable on the market for conveyor belt widths of 2 metres,” says Karl Hoffmann, key account manager at Steinert. He says the extremely high pole change frequency activates even tiny particles measuring less than a millimetre so that they can be separated.

Waignein says he is delighted with the cooperation with Steinert. “Ten years ago, you could only obtain standardized devices on the market. It was impossible for us to adapt them to our specific needs. That’s why we are extremely happy that we and Steinert have been able to jointly develop a system that precisely meets our requirements.”

Galloo has been cooperating with Steinert since 1985, when the recycler bought its first non-ferrous metals separator. “We have always been impressed by the products’ quality; the machines just keep on running—some of them for 15 years now—and they require little maintenance,” says Waignein. “Although there are machines on the market that might seem to be economical, they don’t benefit us if they only run reliably for a year and then cause expensive downtimes.” Today, most of Galloo’s nonferrous metals separators and magnets come from Steinert, according to the two companies.

Steinert refers to Galloo as a special customer because the recycler has provided the engineers at the development and design department with valuable feedback for the past 31 years. “That’s why we decided to draw on Galloo’s practical experience when we updated the splitter in 2016,” says Hoffmann. “The large amounts of fine-grain material prompted us to solve this problem and create a very profitable solution for our customer. The result is a system that sorts fine-grain materials even more reliably and economically than before.” Hoffmann says that’s why he is certain that “our continuous cooperation with customers such as Galloo and our ongoing research and development activities make us a reliable and competent partner for creating separation and sorting solutions.”

Steinert was established in 1889 in Cologne, and the family-owned company describes itself as one of the world leaders in the field of magnetic separation and sensor-based sorting. The company has 300 employees with annual sales of about €100 million ($109 million). In addition to 50 sales partnerships and joint ventures, Steinert has subsidiaries in Australia, Brazil, Japan, the United States, South Africa and Germany.

This article was submitted by Germany-based Steinert.