A Systematic Approach

Your electronics recycling business has grown. You have way too many people taking e-scrap apart by hand, so you have come to the conclusion that you want to install a shredder and downstream sorting and separating system. But before you can begin, you need to answer a number of questions, including: How big of a system do you need? How much money is it going to cost? What type of material will you be processing?

THE STARTING POINT
First, you need to figure out how much and what type of material you have coming in the door. How many pounds per month of each type of product? What is the value of this product when you have shredded it down to the basic commodities you plan on selling? How much is it costing you today to take electronics apart with the labor you have? Are you currently getting the best price for the product you are selling? Will shredding result in a better product to take to market? These and many more questions need to be answered before you think of buying a system.

Put a detailed business plan together with your accountant that includes all the financial information you know your banker will want to see. In that business plan, answer all of the questions mentioned above. The bottom line is that you need to prove to yourself and to your banker that you will be able to be more profitable after the shredder system is installed than you are using your current system of dismantling.

You should have come up with a number that represents how much money you can spend on this project. That number should include not only the price of the equipment but also the costs incurred to install that equipment, moving to a new or larger building if needed and adding employees who possess the skills to run the system. At this time if you still believe you are going to be profitable, start planning your system.

Every system for processing obsolete electronics is different because every electronic recycler’s product stream is different. You cannot buy a system off the shelf as you might a new car. It has to be designed to fit your product stream, your building and your budget.

At this time you need to get professional outside help to work with you and your staff in this effort.

SELECTING YOUR SHREDDER
When it comes to the shredder itself, you need to consider the size and type of machine that will be best suited for your operation. Will one shredder be sufficient, or would two machines be better for your operation?

The size of shredder you should select depends on the quantity and size of the material you plan on processing per month. If you have 1 million pounds of material to shred monthly and it is all going to be the size of a CPU (central processing unit) or smaller, you can look at a single shredder that shreds this material at a rate of roughly 6,000 pounds per hour.

If your million pounds of material is composed of larger devices, like large copiers, printers or old, large systems, and you still need to process 6,000 pounds per hour, you will need two shredders—one to chew up the oversized material to a size that the second machine can handle at a rate of 6,000 pounds an hour or more. This means you will need two shredders with the size and horsepower to handle a production rate of 6,000 pounds per hour. Remember, the system needs to be designed to handle your product stream as well.

After you have determined the optimal number of shredders, it’s time to consider which type of shredder is best suited to your operation. I advise you to avoid small, hammermill-style auto shredders or pulverizers. This type of shredder is good for processing automobiles and old appliances, but in the process of high-speed shredding using the hammers or rings found in these shredders, the material gets folded over and is not completely clean and free of other materials.

For processing obsolete electronics, I suggest a slow-speed counter-rotating shredder with cutters that shear your material, liberating all contaminants. These shredders can be electric or electro-hydraulic driven and come in all sizes as well as in two-shaft and four-shaft configurations. The two-shaft shredders are for rough shredding, while the four-shaft shredders can be equipped with screens that feature openings of various sizes for a controlled particle size. (Again, if you do not have the incoming volume to justify adding two shredders, you still can get one to do the job effectively at a slower throughput rate.)

Depending on the size and type, shredders can range from $300,000 to $1 million.

GETTING THE METALS OUT
Downstream of the shredder(s), the clean steel is typically the first commodity recovered. Steel can make up from 40 percent to 50 percent of your infeed materials, so you want to remove it first. This material should be clean without any copper, plastic or other material attached to it. A large electric drum magnet or an electric or permanent cross-belt magnet can be used to recover ferrous metal. Both will do the job if they are installed properly.

An armored belt on your cross-belt magnet will be necessary because the shredded steel will be very sharp, and if that belt is not armored, it will have to be replaced in a week or two.

Since steel is the largest commodity by weight in most electronics, you need to be able to convey it away from the shredder as soon as it is separated to either a large storage area or into large roll-off containers or steel trailers. If you are shredding 6,000 pounds per hour or more, you are generating more than 2,500 pounds of steel per hour—that is a full roll-off box every day.

Aluminum is the next metal to separate from the mixed shredded product. Aluminum makes up 4 percent to 8 percent of the input material. An eddy-current separator is employed to remove the aluminum. (Each and every machine downstream of the shredder has one job—a magnet system will pull the steel out of the material stream, and an eddy-current separator will pull out the aluminum.) Purchase a unit with a high gauss strength—the higher the better. Remember if the eddy current misses the aluminum at this point, it will be mixed in the precious metals and you will not get paid for it, so you must have a good eddy current to maximize the return on your aluminum.
The price for an effective eddy current depends on the width of the belt and the number of poles in the head pulley. The more poles, the higher the gauss strength and the higher the cost of the unit. A good unit will run from $90,000 to upward of $130,000, depending on the belt width.

Additionally, to get the maximum price for your aluminum, you might want to put a picker on the belt after the eddy-current separator to remove aluminum capacitors by hand, as the capacitors will lower the quality of the aluminum and the price you receive for it.

After you have removed the steel and aluminum, you need to extract the precious metals, which include copper, gold, silver, stainless steel and all other valuable metals. This material can be removed with a piece of equipment that employs a sensor. This is a sophisticated and expensive piece of equipment that, depending on its size (width), can cost as much as the shredder or more. But it is the only piece of equipment that can recover all of the rest of the metallic material.

Such a sorter actually is composed of a couple of pieces of equipment, including a vibrating conveyor to spread out and disperse the material into an even flow to the sorter’s high-speed (600-feet-per-minute)belt, the dry air compressing system that provides the large volume of air needed to operate the system’s air guns and the actual sorter itself. The price of such a system ranges from $350,000 to $600,000.

If you are running a large quantity of end-of-life electronics, you might need more than one sensor sorter in your downstream system to perform the job effectively.

Yes, it is sophisticated and has other equipment associated with it, but when properly set up and maintained this sorter will give you great performance with little or no breakdowns.

The technology used in this equipment is growing along with electronics technology. In the last four years, such sensor-based sorters have evolved to be able to locate and separate material one-third smaller than they could four years ago. If you plan to recover your precious metals, this is the one machine you will need, and it will pay for itself quickly.

SORTING PLASTICS
If your downstream separation equipment is working correctly, you should be left with mixed plastic, ceramics and rubber (the heavies) and light film, cardboard, foam and Mylar (the lights).

A closed-loop air separation system can be used to clean up the valuable PP (polypropylene), PS (polystyrene) and ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene). The light material goes into a cyclone, while the heavies fall out onto a conveyor. The remaining 85 percent will be clean PS, PP and ABS, a product that can be sold.

A basic closed-loop air separation system will cost about $60,000.

If you generate more than 3,000 pounds of this mixed plastic product, you can consider installing a system to further separate the PS, PP and ABS.

CLEANING UP YOUR ACT
One important thing I have yet to mention is the air-cleaning system.

As all of you know, all of this incoming electronic equipment has come from homes or offices, some even from landfills, and is loaded with dust and dirt. The slow-speed shredding system is not going to create much dust, but it will free up the dust and dirt that was in the electronics. You have to collect it by installing one to three air-filtration systems with duct work coming from the top and bottom of the shredder and from any vibrating shakers that free up the dust and from transition points where the material falls. The air system has to be large enough to act as a vacuum cleaner. A good HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter must be attached to the discharge side of the air system. The air coming out of the HEPA filters is cleaner than the air going into the plant.

A good system is going to cost $70,000 to $85,000 each, depending on the size and volume of material you are shredding every hour. A very large system shredding 20,000 pounds per hour will require at least two large air filter systems.

ADDING IT UP
As you can see, there is a lot of equipment needed to design an effective electronics shredding and separation system, and it comes at a considerable expense. We haven’t even included the cost of the conveyors that transfer the material from unit to unit, the picking stations that have to be incorporated with these conveyors or all of the steel work that ties everything together. Nor does this include the electrical system, which provides the primary electricity to the building to power the shredding plant and the secondary system with all the wiring, safety switches, interlocks and solid-state control units, which are major cost factors in the design and set-up of an end-of-life electronics shredding system.

The smallest shredding systems will sell for nearly $2 million, while the very large systems can sell for nearly $7 million, excluding the specialty components, such as the plastic separation system or a copper chopping system. These additional systems can add close to $1 million each depending on the size needed.

Everything needs to be cost analyzed. If you have the volume, the systems will pay for themselves, but you need to be sure you have the volume. Yes, when you install your system, you will pick up more customers because you can offer more secure practices and can handle specialty products you had not been handling up to this time. That is the gravy; instead, I suggest that you size your system based on your current stream of incoming electronics and go from there.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE
The most important part of your system is your shredder crew. After you have done your business plan, got your money and started to order your equipment, you need to look at who is going to be running your new system. The crew could consist of some of the people who have been working for you, a whole new crew or a combination of both.

When the first piece of equipment arrives, you need to have some of your new crew there to help in the set-up and installation. And as more pieces arrive, you add to your crew until you have the whole crew in place, from the person who will be in charge to the pickers, helping with the installation. Your crew  needs to be trained from the ground up and to help not only with the installation of the system but with its start-up and testing. Crew members need to be involved. They need to feel that it is their system. If they feel that way, they will take care of the system and see that it runs smoothly with few or no problems.

Remember the three Cs: care, custody and control. If your employees keep these in mind too, you will have a successful system with the lowest operating costs and the highest production.

The author is owner of Prinz Consultants LLC and can be reached at Pfmprinz@aol.com.