wTe Corp., Bedford, Mass., has announced its Spectramet subsidiary has completed the design, manufacture and installation of its first commercial scale proprietary ZebraSort metal alloy sorter.
The system, developed in conjunction with National Recovery Technologies Inc., targets sorting metal alloys from the mixed nonferrous materials generated by automobile shredders and waste-to-energy facilities. The initial system is located at Spectramet’s technical research center in Greenfield, Mass., and will be dedicated to processing mixed non-ferrous metals from various sources.
“The new ZebraSort system gives us a leading position in the sorting of mixed metals generated by auto shredders and waste-to-energy plants. We believe that this family of technologies will largely replace the wet systems and manual sorting methods currently used in many overseas markets,” David Spencer, wTe chief technical officer, says.
As a result of the project, Spencer suggests that there will be less United States dependence on supplies of strategic virgin metals recovered at primary refineries from ore (most of which are purchased abroad), there will be substantial energy savings from use of scrap rather than ore and virgin metals, and there will be greatly reduced emissions because secondary smelting consumes much less energy than primary production followed by remelting.