5 questions about metals recovery from chop lines

1. What are some common methods of metals recovery?

Operators have tried many methods to minimize losses, and some work better than others. Some methods include:

• recirculating, which takes up valuable production capacity and creates metal dust that’s lost in the dust collection system;
• screening, which works well with larger fractions, but you still lose metals, and the screen requires cleaning;
• water tables that cause oxidation when the metals get wet, costing you value; and
• electrostatic separators that are difficult to maintain because of dust from the wire chopping line.

If you’re operating a wire chopping line and are processing anything other than No. 1 high recovery insulated copper wire (ICW), chances are you’re losing a minimum of 3 percent and as much as 20 percent copper in your waste.

ERS specializes in systems to recover metals from all types of materials, such as ICW, insulated aluminum wire (IAW), auto shredder residue (ASR), ASR fines, aluminum-copper radiators and more. With this experience, we have developed processes to recover metals as small as 2 millimeters.

2. What is ERS’ solution?

We have proven methods for recovering all metals.

First, we use a “balling” mill to ball up metal, making separation easier. The balling of the metal doesn’t trap contaminants and doesn’t affect commodity purity. Next, we use Guidetti separators that have adjustments for air flow, vibration frequency and table inclination, so they can be adjusted to the material being processed. They can be arranged to produce three fractions—heavies, fine metals and waste. They are also very user-friendly.

If you have more than one metal in the material mix—copper and aluminum—we take the mix to a Multi-table. It’s easy to separate materials if they are similarly sized but with different densities. The Multi-table incorporates a trommel to size the metals, then separates them, creating two clean metal fractions.

3. Will the ERS Metal Recovery System work on all chopping lines?

To date, we have put our metals recovery system at the back end of most major chop lines manufactured today. We’ve replaced water tables and electrostatic separators and have installed systems to process the middling and waste fractions to negate the need to recirculate material.

We have metal recovery systems to process waste and tailings from 200 pounds per hour to more than 10,000 pounds per hour.

4. What does it cost to operate the system?

Depending on the size of the system, the operations cost pennies per pound, including wear parts, electrical, labor and maintenance.

5. How can I find out how much metal I’m losing in the waste?

ERS has a complete test facility at our warehouse in Atlanta. You can ship us a 1,000-pound sample, and we’ll process it and give you a full report on the metal content. You can watch the test on a live stream or in-person.